February 24, 2013 0

Episode 23 – Jonah and the Fish and the Plant and the Worm

By JoshWay in Blog, Podcast

[TRANSCRIPT:]

A few months back I said the following during our podcast about wisdom literature:

Read properly, the bible can be quite funny. We’ve picked out a few funny bits along the way, but before too long we’ll look at an entire book that I believe is intended as a dark comedy. You probably won’t be able to guess which one…

The time has come, friends, to reveal which book I was talking about. If you’re familiar with the bible, or even vaguely familiar with popular bible stories and tropes, you might be surprised to discover that the book in question is the one about Jonah, the prophet who done got swallowed by a big fish. Is that the part that’s funny? Well, kinda. Join me for a few minutes and I’ll tell you why I think this story was intended to be a dark comedy.

But first, welcome to BOOK!

[INTRO MUSIC]

This is BOOK, a bible podcast for everybody, and I am Josh Way. We have made great strides in our walk through the Hebrew Bible. In fact, all that remain are a handful of short prophetic books and a few tales from the Babylonian/Persian Exile. Jonah is one of the so-called “minor prophets.” It’s not that he doesn’t matter, but that his book is small and has been collected with several other short works which span Israel’s later history – from the time of the kings up to and throughout the dispersal.

With Jonah we have very little data regarding authorship, historicity, or timeframe. The book of Kings indicates that a prophet named Jonah operated during the reign of Jeroboam II in the 8th century, which would place the events of this story in proximity to the Assyrian conquest of Israel. But the actual writing of the text could have been as late as the 3rd century, after the return of Judah from the exile. This is most likely a tale told and retold throughout the centuries that found a particular written format at a particular historical moment. We’ll see a little later on why the historical backdrop is crucial to interpreting the story of Jonah.

Jonah is a short and very stylized story, told with many puns and a thick coating of that aforementioned dark humor. In modern bibles it’s divided into four chapters, and the story does break nicely into four parts. Not unlike Job, Jonah is a book that contemporary Christians have read in a very specific way, but which warrants a fresh perspective. If you’ve learned about Jonah in church, this is probably what you heard: Jonah was a reluctant missionary. God told him to preach repentance to a city called Nineveh, and he refused to go. So God made a whale swallow Jonah and take him to Nineveh, where he delivered God’s message and the people repented of their sins. The lesson: When God calls you to be a missionary, you might resist, but you can’t run from God.

Well, sure. The story certainly does provide those beats. But there’s something glaring about this reading, something wrong that should be obvious… Did you figure it out? How about this: This is a story about Ancient Israel. There weren’t any missionaries! The modern Christian category of “missionary” may nicely retro-fit to this story, but it’s an anachronistic reading that misses the central tension of the thing. Ancient Jews (like modern Jews) didn’t export their religion to other lands and peoples. They weren’t on a mission to “save” people for their God, in fact they were usually asking God to save them FROM their neighbors. So what we have in Jonah is a bizarre story about Israel’s God asking a prophet to offer a message of hope to the bad guys.

But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. Here’s how the story opens:

[1:1] Now the word of YHWH came to Jonah ben Amittai, saying, [2] “Get up, go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry out against it, for their evil has come to my attention.” [3] But Jonah rose to flee to Tarshish away from the presence of YHWH. He went down to Joppa and found a ship going to Tarshish. So he paid the fare and went down into it, to go with them to Tarshish, away from the presence of YHWH.

Note right off the bat that we don’t have any “in the year of” or “during the reign of”, nor do we have any biographical info about Jonah. The story simply begins. This doesn’t mean for certain that the book is not meant to be historical, but it does mean that it’s beside the point. The events and themes of the story are what’s important, not whether it happened or not. (I’m not saying that’s the case with every bible text. We have to pay attention to the literary cues.)

The prophet gets his orders from God, and they are kind of crazy. Go to Nineveh – an Assyrian city in the heart of enemy territory – and call them out for their wickedness. Again, this doesn’t strike Christians as odd because of their mindset of “taking the gospel to the world.” But in national Israel this is the most unexpected thing ever. Sure, prophets frequently ranted against enemy nations, but that always for the benefit of Israel’s kings and citizens. What purpose could God possibly have in sending one of Israel’s prophets to the bad guys’ door?

And so we sympathize with Jonah to a certain degree, and we understand why he hops a boat to Tarshish – a city far away across the Mediterranean Sea – about as far away as an ancient Israelite can imagine going. This, by the way, is already supposed to be funny. YHWH gives Jonah an undesirable task, so he hops a ship thinking he can just move out of God’s jurisdiction. This is the thematic undercurrent of the whole book, not unlike Ezekiel’s throne vision. Is Israel’s God still God outside the borders of the land? The literature insists that he is.

Back to the story. Continuing in verse 4:

[4] But YHWH hurled a great wind upon the sea, and there was a mighty tempest on the sea, so that the ship was in danger of breaking up. [5] Then the sailors were afraid, and each cried out to his own god. And they hurled the ship’s cargo into the sea to make it lighter for them. But Jonah had gone down into the hold of the ship where he laid down and fell asleep. [6] The captain came and cried, “How can you sleep so soundly? Get up, call out to your god! Maybe the god will regard us, and we will not die.”

A storm threatens to destroy the boat, and the pagan sailors are terrified. They call out to their gods while Jonah takes a nap in the cabin. Then the sailors cast lots to determine whose god is responsible, and the lot falls to Jonah. Jonah Identifies himself as a “Hebrew,” a worshiper of YHWH, “who made the sea and the dry land,” and he tells them why he is fleeing from Israel. The sailors are alarmed, and so at Jonah’s suggestion they hurl him overboard and the storm subsides. The pagan mariners then rejoice and give offerings to Israel’s God. The first scene ends with a loud and rather familiar message: The “righteousness” of pagans enemies is once again greater than that of an Israelite protagonist. This theme will only get louder as the story continues.

You probably know what happens next. A whale – or rather a “great fish” – swallows Jonah. And since modern readings of Jonah have tended to be serious and heavy-handed, the episode with the fish has been regarded with the same severity and defended as one of history’s great miracles. I think this really misses the point of a text that is clearly designed to be over-the-top and funny. There’s also a pun we miss in English. The Semitic word for “fish” is nun, and a reasonable translation of the name Nineveh is then, “The Fish Place.” Jonah refuses to go to the Fish City, so God – according to verse 17 – “appointed” a fish to come and get him.

Chapter two finds Jonah in the belly of the fish, praying a prayer to YHWH. Now, this prayer is highly regarded today by Christians for its lofty words and pious confessions, but I’m going to suggest that it’s actually supposed to be a parody of religious gobbledygook and a hilarious indictment of Jonah’s arrogance and xenophobia. All you have to do is read the prayer in context and allow the final verse of the chapter to be the punchline of the joke. Let’s begin in verse 7:

[7] When my life was fainting away, I remembered YHWH,
and my prayer came to you, into your holy temple.
[8] Those who pay regard to vain idols forsake their hope of steadfast love.
[9] But I with the voice of thanksgiving will sacrifice to you;
what I have vowed I will pay.
Salvation belongs to the LORD!”

[10] And YHWH commanded the fish and it vomited Jonah out onto dry land.

Now tell me that’s not supposed to be funny! Jonah goes on and on about how religious he is, how he has access to God in his Temple, and how vain and pointless the worship of the pagans is. The fish can’t take it anymore, so it vomits Jonah out onto the shore. I might be wrong, but I think that’s the funniest joke in the bible.

So Jonah, defeated and still reluctant, heads off to Nineveh. And here’s what happens, chapter three verse four:

[4] Jonah went immediately into the city, a day’s journey. And he cried out, “In forty days Nineveh will be overthrown!” [5] And the people of Nineveh believed God. They called for a fast and put on sackcloth, every last one of them.

Fasting, wearing sackcloth, and sitting in ashes were common ancient customs associated with mourning and loss. The King of Nineveh decrees that everyone – men, women, children, even animals – participate in a citywide fast to indicate their repentance. God notices their display and relents from his plan to “overthrow” the city. Disaster averted, point made, happy ending. And yet, the book doesn’t end here. There’s one more chapter…

In chapter four, Jonah throws a little hissy fit. Verse 1:

[4:1] But this displeased Jonah greatly, and he was angry. [2] He prayed to YHWH and said, “O YHWH! Isn’t this exactly what I said when I was still in my own country? That is why I made haste to flee to Tarshish, because I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love and relenting from disaster. [3] And so, O YHWH, go ahead and take my life from me, for I would rather die than live.”

Instead of leaping for joy at the amazing thing he just witnessed, Jonah is angry: “I KNEW you were gonna pull something like this, God!” It’s really quite remarkable. And if we insist on reading him as the original “missionary,” we’ve got to wonder why he’s such a bigoted jackass. If, however, we read the book as a satire on Israel’s xenophobic, holier-than-thou view of itself over against its pagan neighbors, the story opens up for us.

The final scene of the book is rather quiet and mundane compared with the rest of the story. Jonah goes outside the city and sits in the hot sun to pout. God “appoints” a plant to grow and shade him, which pleases Jonah. God then “appoints” a worm to eat the plant, which displeases the prophet. The book closes as God puts these questions to Jonah:

[9] God said to Jonah, “Are you really so deeply grieved about that plant?” “Yes,” he replied, “So deeply that I want to die.” [10] And YHWH said, “You pity the plant, for which you did not labor, and which you did not grow, which appeared overnight and perished overnight. [11] And so should I not pity Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than 120,000 persons who do not yet know their right hand from their left, and many beasts as well?”

In a speech reminiscent of the book of Job, God points out the absurdity of Jonah’s selfish prejudice. He wept over the death of a plant because it offered him shade at no cost to himself. But the deaths of 120,000 Ninevites wouldn’t have brought a tear to his eye because, according to Jonah’s worldview, they are just foreigners, enemies, fully deserving the wrath of God just for not being born in Israel.

The details on exactly why God was angry with Nineveh and what he planned to do about it are vague, but they’re also not the point. From the perspective of the author (and of Jonah), the shocker is that God is even paying attention to pagans in the first place. The book of Ruth gave us a story about a pagan in Israel who experienced God’s blessing. Ezekiel gave displaced exiles the hopeful message that God’s jurisdiction extended beyond Israel’s borders. Now Jonah goes even further, insisting that this same God cares deeply about the fates not just of Israelites residing in foreign lands, nor of foreigners who happen to reside in Israel, but of actual foreigners living in foreign lands.

This kind of message would not likely have been found in Israel prior to the Exile. But their experiences in Babylon and later in Persia forced serious reevaluation of everything Israel thought they believed about God and their enemies. Pagans were no longer the bad guys living in far off cities. They were often still regarded as enemies, but they were also neighbors and colleagues. Stories like Jonah reflect the anthropological evolution of Israel while asking some very potent questions about her God. It’s a super funny book, but also one that runs surprisingly deep and offers a challenge that is still challenging on our side of history.

This has been BOOK, a bible podcast for everybody, and I have been Josh Way. If you enjoyed this podcast, I encourage you to share, like, tweet, tweep, kreep, blog, tumbl, stumble, chumble, crackle, frackle, spackle and flooz it to your online friends and family. If you have any comments, questions or constructive feedback, email me at book@joshway.com. You can also leave a voicemail at 801-760-3013, and maybe I’ll answer it on the podcast. Read the BOOK blog and find more content at BOOK.JOSHWAY.COM. That’s it for me, Bible pals. I’ll catch you next time.

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Tags: bible, hebrew, jonah, nineveh, prophet, prophets

February 14, 2013 1

Episode 22 – Ezekiel’s Magical Mystery Tour

By JoshWay in Blog, Podcast

[PULP FICTION CLIP – EZEKIEL 25:17]

[TRANSCRIPT:]

A classic clip from my favorite Phil LaMarr movie, Pulp Fiction, featuring a direct quote from the prophet Ezekiel – or is it? Welcome to BOOK!

[INTRO MUSIC]

This is BOOK, a bible podcast for everybody, and I am Josh Way. Today we continue our look at the “major” prophets and the extraordinary literature produced in their names during the time of Judah’s exile in Babylon. And before we get to know Ezekiel and his extremely trippy visions, it might benefit us to take a moment and explore the history of the exile a little more deeply. So far we’ve observed the chronology of exile, that the empire of Assyria destroyed the Northern Kingdom of Israel in the eighth century BCE, and that Babylon conquered Jerusalem in the sixth century and carried the people off into forced relocation. It’s worth our time to talk a little more about the differences between these two giant empires and their approaches to world conquest.

Assyria was perhaps the first “superpower” to set its sights on world domination (the “world” being the extents of the Near Eastern region in which they lived). Their plan was simple: burn everything and kill everyone. Assyria’s ruthless brutality was unstoppable and struck fear into the hearts of small territories like Judah, as we’ve seen in the literary witness of the bible. However, their indiscriminate violence was also their undoing. As they defeated region after region and destroyed every resource, they spread themselves too thin and diluted their own power. This is likely the reason that Isaiah’s forecast came true, and the monstrous empire ran out of steam before it could consume Jerusalem.

Meanwhile Babylon was growing and licking its chops, waiting for its opportunity to take the stage as the ruler of the world. In many ways Babylon was just as brutal as Assyria, but in some very significant ways it was much smarter. Babylon didn’t simply slash and burn their conquests into submission, they actually absorbed the resources of a captured land. And while Assyria may have left some able-bodied subjects alive to serve as slaves, Babylon had a much smarter approach to exile. The leaders and thinkers and culture-makers of the conquered land weren’t slaughtered, they were carried off to Babylon to become subjects of the empire. This is what happened to Jerusalem, in several stages, in the early sixth century BCE, and this is where we meet Ezekiel.

Jeremiah had watched in horror (though perhaps not surprise) as the priests, governors, artists and craftsmen of Judah were led away to Babylon, and among them was Ezekiel. Like Jeremiah, Ezekiel was a priest, but unlike the weeping prophet he was an active duty priest, perhaps even the high priest. And while evidence suggests that the words and visions of Isaiah and Jeremiah might have been recorded and preserved by assistants or disciples, Ezekiel’s writings have a much more personal, autobiographical feel to them. His scroll opens in Babylon, “among the exiles by the Chebar River.” Immediately, Ezekiel has a bizarre vision. Chapter 1, verse 4:

4 I looked, and a stormy wind came sweeping out of the north – a huge cloud and flashing fire, surrounded by a radiance, and in the center of it, in the middle of the fire, gleaming like amber. 5 In the center of it were also the figures of four creatures. And this was their appearance: They had the figures of human beings. 6 However, each had four faces, and each of them had four wings. 7 The legs of each were fused into a single rigid leg, and the feet of each were like a single calf’s hoof, and they sparkled like burnished bronze. 8 They had human hands below their wings. The four of them had their faces and their wings on their four sides. 9 Each one’s wings touched those of the other. They did not turn when they moved, each could move in the direction of any of its faces.
10 Each of them had a human face the front; each of the four had the face of a lion on the right; each of the four had the face of an ox on the left; and each of the four had the face of an eagle the back. 11 Such were their faces. As for their wings, they were separated: above, each had two touching those of the others, while the other two covered its body.

Ezekiel then sees a giant contraption in the sky: Four wheels within wheels, covered with eyes, supporting a great platform, and on that platform the throne of Israel’s God. The throne can move in any direction without turning, and blinding light radiates from it, and deafening noise like thunder precedes it.

OK. This is just chapter one and already we need to stop and have a little chat. This vision – or dream, or reverie, or whatever it is – shares some elements with Isaiah’s vision of the seraphim, the winged fire creatures which orbited the throne of Israel’s God. But the bizarre, impossible descriptions of the “creatures” and the throne here in Ezekiel are something unique and innovative for the Hebrew Bible. Over the centuries, this material has been deeply misunderstood and has inspired two extreme reactions: 1) get weirded out and put the book down, or 2) embrace them as literal descriptions of cosmic monsters and build yourself a panic room.

What we’re encountering here for the first time is a unique and fascinating literary genre called “Apocalyptic.” Now, and I can’t stress this enough, “apocalypse” does NOT mean “the end of the world” or even “an event which changes the world.” “Apocalypse” is a Greek word meaning “hidden,” or “mysterious,” and in this case it refers to a cosmic mystery which could not be explained in mundane language, but which is revealed through strange symbols and metaphors. Understanding how apocalyptic texts work is one of the essential keys to accessing some of the most divisive and problematic texts in the bible.

This can be very hard for us as modern, western readers. We have to forget everything we think we know about “the apocalypse,” and “the end times,” and zombies and Kirk Cameron, and allow history and literature to guide our thinking more than popular culture. There are two other major apocalyptic texts in the bible – a series of strange dreams in the book of Daniel and a first century apocalypse written by the apostle John in the Greek New Testament. Those will take us even deeper into this crazy genre, but Ezekiel gives us a perfect entry point to discover the history and literature behind “apocalypse.”

First, the history: It makes good sense that our first, full-fledged “apocalypse” text comes out of the Babylonian exile. Because, at risk of reduction and oversimplification, it was in Babylon that Israel was exposed to literary traditions which bear a striking resemblance to biblical apocalyptic. Now, I say “at risk of reduction” because it’s really more complicated than that. There are traces, as we saw, of apocalyptic elements in earlier Hebrew texts, and these may have had other influences, such as Canaanite religion. Still, the overall point is this: these texts, strange as they are to us, were familiar and even prevalent in the world which produced the bible. We must assume that the original recipients of these texts would have recognized and understood the rich symbolism immediately.

And speaking of symbolism, this is the literary bread and butter of apocalyptic. The strange, creepy, lurid, often impossible imagery of apocalyptic writing is what makes it unique and powerful. The insistence upon so-called “literal” interpretations of apocalyptic has left many confused and exasperated with the bible. The message of apocalyptic depends on audacious (and usually mixed) metaphors. In this way, these texts are the political cartoons of the ancient world. By insisting that the cartoons must be “real” and one-dimensional, we miss the urgent and relevant message of the text.

And this is perhaps the most important point I can make about apocalyptic: the message of a text like Ezekiel, Daniel, and even Revelation, despite how recent generations have insisted upon reading them, is ALWAYS a message of HOPE. I’ll say that another way: While people today often read apocalyptic texts as warnings of doom disturbing the peaceful status quo of our time, they were in truth originally intended as messages of light and hope in times of extreme turmoil.

And so, back to Ezekiel. Here’s the big picture: Ezekiel, the de facto leader of the people of Judah in exile, must find new words and ways to express the madness and hope of the present crisis. Of course there’s the full, rich tradition of Israel: the Torah, the wisdom books, the Psalms… They are precious, they are the fuel that keeps the people going, but they need something new, something to address and make sense of the chaos of exile. Ezekiel latches onto something outrageous, something that speaks to the present problem, and something which turns the rhetorical weapons of the enemy back on themselves.

Now let’s look at this first vision again: Ezekiel sees four humanoid “creatures,” each with four wings and four faces. One face is human, one is lion, one is ox, and one is eagle. Their wings are spread out, touching at the tip, and they move through the air on a grid – they do not turn when they change direction. Their movement will make more sense in a moment, but about those faces. The human face is, of course, human. The lion is supreme among the wild beasts, and the ox is the most powerful of the domesticated animals. And eagles are the kings of the sky. In some way these beings seem to represent the full company of creatures, man and beast, and in this way they represent the totality of creation itself. They fly ahead of the throne of Israel’s God, proclaiming his sovereignty over the created order and announcing his arrival. Then comes the strange mobile contraption which bears his throne. Beneath it are wheels within wheels, moving in all directions and covered with eyes – whatever this thing is, it is omniscient, it sees all, and it can go anywhere.

And this is the bottom line of Ezekiel’s throne vision: Israel’s God is not – as he had been imagined for generations – contained within the boundaries of Jerusalem, tethered to Zion, trapped in the Temple. If the remnant of Judah is going to find any kind of hope in exile, they have to believe that their God is mobile, that his dominion is not interrupted by their relocation. This vision isn’t meant to reveal something physical and literal about this God, it’s meant to inspire and reassure a people whose entire worldview had been shattered. This is a true apocalypse. It has nothing to do with the “end of the world,” and everything to do with hope for hurting people here, right now, in Babylon by the Chebar River.

Well, now that we’ve taken the time to examine the history and literature behind Ezekiel, let’s take a “greatest hits” look at the rest of his writing. After the throne vision Ezekiel receives his calling, not unlike Samuel and Isaiah and Jeremiah before him. In chapter 2 he hears the voice of God calling him to be a prophet to the exiles:

1 And he said to me, “Son of man, stand up on your feet that I may speak to you.”
2 As he spoke to me, a spirit entered into me and set me upon my feet, and I heard what was being said to me.
3 He said to me, “Son of man, I am sending you to the people of Israel, that nation of rebels, who have rebelled against me. — They as well as their fathers have defied me to this very day.
4 For the sons are brazen of face and stubborn of heart. I send you to them, and you shall say to them: ‘Thus said the Lord GOD…’ 5 whether they listen or not, for they are a rebellious breed, that they may know that there was a prophet among them.

God refers to Ezekiel throughout the scroll as “son of man,” a contentious phrase in some schools of biblical interpretation, but which is simply a Hebrew idiom meaning “human being” or “mortal person.” It’s God’s way of keeping Ezekiel in his place, reminding him of his lowly station. In this vision God gives Ezekiel a scroll filled with his words and commands him to eat it, and he obeys. Now the words of God are “inside” the prophet. But before he can go forth and speak the words to the people, God puts Ezekiel through several symbolic experiences. First, the prophet is struck mute and his body is bound so he cannot leave his house and address the people before the appointed time. Then, in chapter four, Ezekiel sits outside in view of his fellow Israelites and enacts the destruction of Jerusalem with bricks, dirt, and household objects. (The timeline can be a little confusing, but Ezekiel and his colleagues were taken into captivity in several stages, and the siege of Jerusalem would not occur for a few more years.) Ezekiel lies on his left side for over a year, and his right side for forty days, symbolizing the punishments of Israel and Judah.

Now, the bread thing. If you’ve been to the grocery store in the few years, you may have noticed an entire line of food products based on Ezekiel 4:9, in which God gives these instructions to the prophet:

[9] “And now, take wheat and barley, beans and lentils, millet and emmer, and put them into a single vessel and make your bread from them.”

“Hey,” said some well-meaning Christians, “there’s a recipe for bread in the Bible! This must be some kind of magical holy God bread. Let’s make it and sell it!” This leads me to wonder whether they ever kept reading and made it to verse 12:

[12] And you shall eat it as a barley cake, baking it in their sight on human dung.”

Yum! The point of the bread is that it is made out of sparse ingredients and cooked over a last-resort fuel by Ezekiel as he lie on his side, a symbol of Israel’s desperation as their resources are cut off. (By the way, Ezekiel negotiates with God and they settle on ox dung. Dodged a bullet there.) The point of all of this is: soon Jerusalem will fall, and there will be no home to go back to. Exile is not a momentary challenge to be overcome, it is a new reality.

In chapter 8 Ezekiel has a vision of the Temple back in Jerusalem. The prophet walks through the various courts of the temple complex and sees the place trashed, taken over by pagan gods, cults, and sun worship. This is the answer to the unspoken question, “how could Israel’s God allow this calamity to befall the people?” In chapter 9, Ezekiel sees the idolaters in the Temple executed for their crimes, and in chapter 10 the “glory of YHWH” leaves the Temple. The center of Israel’s political AND religious life is symbolically drained of its power. This is the dark b-side to the opening vision of the book.

Then in chapter 11 the tone of Ezekiel’s message changes, not unlike that of Jeremiah, or Isaiah. When the hammer falls and the warnings have been borne out, it’s time for more hopeful words. Verse 17:

[17] Therefore say, ‘Thus says the Lord GOD: I will gather you from the peoples and assemble you out of the countries where you have been scattered, and I will give you the land of Israel.’ [18] And when they come there, they will remove from it all its detestable things and all its abominations. [19] And I will give them one heart, and a new spirit I will put within them. I will remove the heart of stone from their flesh and give them a heart of flesh, [20] that they may walk in my statutes and keep my rules and obey them. And they shall be my people, and I will be their God.

This is very similar to the “New Covenant” passage in Jeremiah 31, looking forward to a new exodus, the new thing that will have to happen if Israel is ever going to be restored. For Jeremiah, a new Torah would be written on the hearts of the people. Meanwhile, many miles away, Ezekiel confronts the same hope: the Israelites’ hard hearts, bent on easy idolatry and defaming the old covenant, will somehow be cleansed and made new. Then and only then can they return to the land.

Ezekiel predicts the ongoing deportation of more and more Judahites, and condemns the false prophets – those who continued to insist that this was all just a minor bump in the road, and that God’s rescue would come at any moment. After some parables which explore the political treachery at the heart of the Babylonian exile (chapters 17-18, 23), we come to chapter 24 and two juxtaposed accounts of tragic loss, as the final siege of Jerusalem begins back in Judah, and Ezekiel’s wife dies in Babylon. Ezekiel says that God forbids him to mourn, which is a “sign” to the other exiles not to mourn the loss of Jerusalem. To mourn a loss is to ponder its pointlessness, and God has made it clear through the prophet that the death of Jerusalem is not random or unexpected.

The next eight chapters consist of fairly standard “oracles” against Israel’s enemies, words of warning and condemnation that usually wind up being ironically aimed right back at Israel. And here, as a point of trivia, is where Tarantino borrowed a bit from the prophet. Here’s the real Ezekiel 25:17:

I will wreak frightful vengeance upon them by furious punishment; and when I inflict My vengeance upon them, they shall know that I am YHWH.

This comes from an oracle against the Philistines, the great enemy of Israel during the reigns of Saul and David. As you heard Tarantino added a lot of cool sounding stuff about the shepherd and weak, though there are some grammar issues in that line that always bugged me.

After his oracles against the nations, Ezekiel rants a little more about the fall of Jerusalem, and in chapter 34 offers another word of hope, the dream of a “covenant of peace” which will restore the land and the people and bring them back into a relationship with YHWH. This hopeful restoration is envisioned in an extraordinary way in chapter 37. Ezekiel imagines himself in a valley full of dry, brittle bones. God commands the prophet to speak the “word of God” to the bones, which proceed to reconstitute and come back to life. The message of the book is made clear: Israel had to die, but God can and will bring it back to life.

Ezekiel’s next oracle is against a ruler named Gog from a place called Magog. History is unsure who this is a reference to. Is Magog lost to history, or is this a symbolic enemy constructed for the purposes of this vision? No one is sure. But the point of the oracle is clear: this enemy is seen rising up against Israel and suffering a spectacular defeat. Whether this is a future, literal battle or a visionary construct, it stands in stark contrast to the battle with Babylon which ended in disaster.

The rest of Ezekiel’s scroll focuses on the restoration of Israel, specifically a detailed vision of the design and building of a new Temple. The “glory of YHWH” returns to inhabit the new Temple, and a mysterious “prince” appears to rule over New Israel. All of the feasts and traditions are reestablished, and the last few chapters of the book read like a new version of Leviticus or Deuteronomy, as the duties of priests and leaders are described in detail. Of course this makes sense as the way that Ezekiel, himself once the high priest, would explore and anticipate the salvation of Israel.

The final vision of the book (chapter 47-48) sees fresh water flowing out from the New Temple, distributing the central power of the presence of YHWH throughout the restored nation. The land is then portioned out among the twelve tribes of Israel, as it was in the Torah. This makes for a rather boring final chapter (to our eyes), but once again the message is crystal clear: God has not abandoned this family, and just as Israel received its identity and inheritance from the Torah, so again will God deliver and rebuild this nation. What look like technical details to us were words of joy and comfort to the Babylonian exiles.

And so end the words of Ezekiel, the priest without a temple, the leader of a people without a home. The three so-called “major prophets” had very unique voices, but ultimately one message: just as Israel’s punishment in the form of exile was inevitable, so is her ultimate restoration. But how and when will it come about? That hopeful question looms over the rest of the bible. In the coming weeks we’ll continue our examination of the exile literature and the amazing experiences of some other displaced Israelites. But first, next time, I think we’ll deal with a short and strange book called Jonah, which is full of odd surprises.

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Tags: apocalypse, apocalyptic, assyria, babylon, bible, exile, ezekiel, genre, history, israel, judah, literature, prophet

January 27, 2013 0

Episode 21 – Jeremiah: The Man Who Was Very Sad

By JoshWay in Blog, Podcast

[TRANSCRIPT]

The writings of the biblical prophets are long, dense, and full of confusing and outrageous content. Are you thinking what I’m thinking? PODCAST!! Welcome to BOOK.

[INTRO MUSIC]

This is BOOK, a bible podcast for everybody. I’m Josh Way. Last time we examined the scroll of Isaiah, which presented a prophetic response to two historical crises: the Assyrian conquest of the Northern kingdom of Israel and the devastation and exile of Southern Judah at the hands of Babylon. This week and next we’ll meet two other “major” prophets who lived at the time of the Babylonian exile. Their names are Yirmiyahu (or Jeremiah) and Ezeki’el (or Ezekiel). Jeremiah and Ezekiel give us two unique perspectives on the cataclysmic exile of Judah. For Jeremiah was among those left behind in demolished Jerusalem, and Ezekiel was with those who were dragged off to Babylon. This week we’ll focus on Jeremiah and the lengthy book which bears his name.

Jeremiah was a tormented, miserable dude and truly unique among the prophets of Israel and Judah for a number of reasons which we will explore presently. Here’s how his scroll begins:

[1] The words of Jeremiah, the son of Hilkiah, one of the priests at Anathoth in the territory of Benjamin. [2] The word of the LORD came to him in the days of King Josiah son of Amon of Judah, in the thirteenth year of his reign, [3] and throughout the days of King Jehoiakim the son of Josiah of Judah, and until the end of the eleventh year of Zedekiah, the son of Josiah of Judah, when Jerusalem went into exile in the fifth month.

We already have more personal information about Jeremiah than we ever got about Isaiah. He is a priest, for one thing, or rather “one of the priests at Anathoth.” This means he is descended from the family of Abiathar, the priestly family who served under David but were disgraced and banished to Anathoth by Solomon in 1 Kings 2. Jeremiah is from a priestly family, though he is not from the family that is currently running the Temple. It’s complicated.

The political backdrop to Jeremiah’s public campaign is fascinating. It ends with conquest and exile, but it begins in much happier times, during the reign of Josiah. You may remember from our discussion of Kings and Chronicles that Josiah was the last good (and in many ways the last real) King of Judah. In the wake of king after king who discarded and disrespected the covenant religion of Israel, Josiah was a reformer who tried his best to clean house and get the nation back on track. It’s during this time of relative peace and progress that Jeremiah receives his “calling.” We continue in chapter 1:

[4] The word of the LORD came to me:
[5] “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I set you apart;
I appointed you a prophet concerning the nations.”
[6] I replied, “Ah, Lord GOD! I do not know how to speak, for I am still a boy.”
[7] But the LORD said to me, “Do not say, ‘I am still a boy;
but go where I send you, and speak what I command you.
[8] Do not be afraid of them, for I am with you to deliver you,
declares the LORD.”
[9] Then the LORD put out his hand and touched my mouth.
And the LORD said to me, “I have just put my words in your mouth.
[10] I have appointed you this day over nations and kingdoms, to pluck up and to break down,
to destroy and to overthrow, to build and to plant.”

Unlike Moses, Isaiah, and Ezekiel, whose callings involved bizarre visions of creatures and lights, Jeremiah simply hears a voice, the voice of Israel’s God giving him a mission. And it’s hard to miss the explicitly political nature of this mission, with all the talk of “nations and kingdoms.” Jeremiah is called to speak truth to power, and like the prophets before him, he’d really rather not, thank you very much. God reassures him and uses two visual puns to make his point.

First, he shows Jeremiah an almond branch and says “I’ll be watching you!” This will confuse us if we don’t know that the Hebrew words for “almond” and “watching” sound alike. Next, Jeremiah sees a boiling pot with a steaming spout pointing to the North. Trouble, God says, is coming from the North. And he isn’t kidding… Remember, the Northern kingdom of Israel has already been destroyed and desolate for generations, and Judah has managed to avoid the same fate, up til now.

For the next ten chapters, Jeremiah delivers one scathing critique of Judah after another, insisting that the kingdom’s government and religion are irreparably corrupt. He employs the gut wrenching metaphor of a broken marriage vow, with God as the forsaken cuckold and Jerusalem as the unfaithful bride. This is chapter 3:

[1] “If a man divorces his wife and she goes from him
and becomes another man’s wife, will he return to her?
Would not that land be greatly polluted?
You have played the whore with many lovers; and would you return to me?
declares the LORD.
[2] Lift up your eyes to the bare heights, and see!
Where have you not been ravished?
By the waysides you have sat awaiting lovers like a bandit in the desert.
You have polluted the land with your vile whoredom.
[3] Therefore the showers have been withheld, and the spring rain has not come;
yet you have the forehead of a whore; you refuse to be ashamed.”

And it’s not as if Jeremiah is simply ignoring King Josiah’s reforms, it’s as if those very reforms were the target of his critique, as if to say “it’s all too-little-too-late.” Continuing on:

[4] Have you not just now called to me, ‘My father, you are the friend of my youth—
[5] will he be angry forever, will he be indignant to the end?’
Behold, you have spoken, but you have done all the evil that you could.”

Jeremiah goes on to attack what he sees as the broken religion of Judah: their over-reliance on the Temple and their ignorance of the Torah (chapter 8). And in chapter 10 he outright mocks the sorts of pagan idols that had become popular in the kingdom. Verse 3:

[3] … A tree from the forest is cut down and worked with an axe by the hands of a craftsman.
[4] He decorates it with silver and gold; he fastens it with hammer and nails so it doesn’t fall over.
[5] It’s like a scarecrow in a cucumber field, it cannot speak;
It has to be carried, for it cannot walk.
Do not be afraid of it, for it cannot do evil, neither is it in it to do any good.”

And whereas most prophets before him offered the hope of rescue and restoration should Judah change her ways, Jeremiah’s message is punctuated with a warning of inevitable doom. Verse 22:

[22] Hark a noise! It is coming—
a great commotion out of the north
to make the cities of Judah a desolation, a lair for jackals.

The enemy is coming for us, and when they get here it’s all over. And remember: this is when things are ostensibly going WELL. This is the craziness of Jeremiah’s message and his moment. Isaiah spoke truth to power when the king’s foolishness took Judah to the brink of destruction. Jeremiah must be a divinely-appointed party-pooper and tell Josiah, “Sorry, your majesty, your reforms are nice and things are going well, but it’s all too-little, too-late.”

Given the inherent negativity and conflict in Jeremiah’s campaign, it’s not surprising what a toll it all took on the man. Jeremiah is known as the “weeping prophet,” and most of his writing consists of laments and complaints. Also not surprising is the strong opposition which grew in response to his message, which only intensified the prophet’s torment. The next 10 chapters are about Jeremiah’s personal experiences, and in keeping with the tone of his mission they aren’t particularly fun. Certain men from his hometown rise up and threaten to kill Jeremiah if he doesn’t keep his mouth shut (chapter 11), and a priest named Pashhur has him briefly imprisoned (chapter 20).

Meanwhile, God continually supplies the prophet with unpopular things to say, most of them unhappy symbolic illustrations of Judah’s fate: a once-beautiful loincloth buried in the mud is the once-proud nation in exile (chapter 13), jars full of wine are the drunken uselessness of Judah’s kings and citizens (chapter 13), a lump of malleable clay on a potter’s wheel is the vulnerable city of Jerusalem (chapter 18), and a broken flask is the broken people of Judah (chapter 19). These don’t win Jeremiah any fans. And when the constant gloom of his message and the increasing persecution push Jeremiah over the edge, he loses his cool and has a breakdown in chapter 20, verse 7:

[7] LORD, you have deceived me, and I was deceived;
you are stronger than I, and you have prevailed.
I have become a laughingstock all the day; everyone mocks me.
[8] For whenever I speak, I cry out, I shout, “Violence and destruction!”
For the word of the LORD has become for me a reproach and derision all day long.

ENOUGH! cries Jeremiah, but his work is not done. In fact, the next 10 chapters detail the prophet’s confrontations with his opposition, beginning in chapter 21 with his unhappy words to the last kings of Judah. The last few kings, including the sons of Josiah, were typically stooges of either Egypt or Babylon, both of whom were fighting for control of Judah at the time. The last king, Zedekiah, was an installed puppet of Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon. Jeremiah’s message to the kings is this: you are finished. In chapter 21 Zedekiah asks the prophet for a word of hope against Babylon’s tyranny, and this is the reply, in verse 8:

[8] …Thus says the LORD: Behold, I set before you the way of life and the way of death.
[9] He who stays in this city shall die by the sword, by famine, and by pestilence,
but he who goes out and surrenders to the Chaldeans who are besieging you shall live and shall have his life as a prize of war.
[10] For I have set my face against this city for harm and not for good, declares the LORD: it shall be given into the hand of the king of Babylon, and he shall burn it with fire.

Then, in chapter 23, for the first time, Jeremiah starts talking funny:

[5] “The days are coming, declares the LORD, when I will raise up for David a righteous Branch, and he shall reign as king and deal wisely, and shall execute justice and righteousness in the land. [6] In his days Judah will be saved, and Israel will dwell securely. And this is the name by which he will be called: ‘The LORD is our righteousness.’
[7] “Therefore, the days are coming, declares the LORD, when they shall no longer say, ‘As the LORD lives who brought up the people of Israel out of the land of Egypt,’ [8] but ‘As the LORD lives who brought up and led the offspring of the house of Israel out of the north country and out of all the countries where he had driven them.’ Then they shall dwell in their own land.”

Up to this point Jeremiah’s message has been one of inevitable doom and condemnation. Suddenly he sounds more like Isaiah, imagining a righteous king who will restore Judah and bring about a New Exodus. What happened? Well, the timeline of Jeremiah is a bit muddled because this is not a typical narrative. These are the collected writings and sayings of the prophet, so time passes and skips around without us noticing. Jeremiah lived to witness the Babylonian invasion, and he watched in horror as the priests and officials were dragged off into exile. Words of warning give way to words of shock and – ultimately – words of hope. Jeremiah will return to this theme, but for now there are more confrontations to be had. This time, the prophet faces off against some rivals – prophets with opposing viewpoints.

This is a new idea for us, but it only makes sense that in times of strife and chaos, pundits would pop up on all sides with all manner of perspectives. Jeremiah has this to say about the other prophets of Judah, in chapter 23:

[13] “In the prophets of Samaria I saw an unsavory thing:
they prophesied by Baal and led my people Israel astray.
[14] But in the prophets of Jerusalem I have seen a horrible thing:
they commit adultery and walk in lies;
they strengthen the hands of evildoers, so that no one turns from his evil;
all of them have become like Sodom to me, and its inhabitants like Gomorrah.”

We get a little more insight into the type of prophets Jeremiah confronted in chapter 28 as he faces off with a “false prophet” called Hananiah. Their epic rap battle takes place in front of the priests and officials of Zedekiah’s administration. Jeremiah comes before the assembly wearing a yoke, a wooden frame like those worn by beasts of burden, which represented the oppression of Babylon’s King Nebuchadnezzar. Hananiah triumphantly breaks the yoke, freeing Jeremiah from its bondage and makes this proclamation, in verse 11:

[11] And Hananiah spoke in the presence of all the people, saying, “Thus says the LORD: Even so will I break the yoke of Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon from the neck of all the nations within two years.”

Unfortunately, he was just telling the group what they wanted to hear. The exile lasted for seventy years, and Hananiah was dead within one. It’s easy to demonize your opponents in the heat of a political battle, but hindsight reveals who was on the mark and who was dead wrong.

Then in (what we call) chapter 30 Jeremiah returns to the topic of Israel’s future. This is from chapter 31:

[27] “Days are coming, declares the LORD, when I will sow the house of Israel and the house of Judah with the seed of man and the seed of beast. [28] And it shall come to pass that as I have watched over them to pluck up and break down, to overthrow, destroy, and bring harm, so I will watch over them to build and to plant, declares the LORD. [29] In those days they shall no longer say:
“‘The fathers have eaten sour grapes,
and the children’s teeth are set on edge.’
[30] But everyone shall die for his own iniquity. Each man who eats sour grapes, his own teeth shall be set on edge.

Jeremiah quotes a popular saying of his day, “Fathers have eaten sour grapes and the kids’ teeth are set on edge.” Basically, this means that the mistakes of one generation will be visited upon the next. This kind of thinking goes all the way back to the ten commandments in Exodus 20, which state plainly that God will hold every generation accountable for the sins of previous generations. This is how the covenant law worked – every generation was born into the covenant and picked up where the last one left off. Now, at the “end of all things,” the covenant is shattered and most of Jeremiah’s contemporaries were quick to blame prior generations for their misfortune. Whoever was to blame (previous generations, the current generation, Babylon), the undeniable fact was that the covenant had been broken. A Torah that gave identity to a specific group in a specific territory was of little use when the people were scattered in foreign lands. Jeremiah addresses this harsh reality in a most surprising way. Chapter 31, verse 31:

[31] “Days are coming, declares the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, [32] not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, declares the LORD. [33] For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the LORD: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people.”

Jeremiah says that Israel needs a new covenant, a new Torah, a new arrangement with God to get them through the horror of exile. And it can’t be based on inheritance or possession of land anymore, so it will have to happen in the hearts and minds of the people. This kind of talk would have been unthinkable in previous generations, but now it’s the only way forward if this community is going to preserve their identity.

This is a major evolution in Israel’s religious and political thinking (and we should realize by now that the two are one in the same). Just as the Mosaic covenant (the Torah) was the template for how ancient Israel viewed the world and its place in it, the exile and all of its hopes and horrors are now the defining rubric of what will soon be called “Jewish” identity. Israel was born when God saved a group of people from Egypt. That same group now needs to be reborn in a similarly spectacular fashion from the cauldron of Babylon. This is the new central tension for the rest of the bible.

We’ve hit the theological climax of Jeremiah’s message, but the scroll presents many more episodes from his life. Let’s take a quick look at them.

Jeremiah buys a plot of land in Judah DURING THE BABYLONIAN SIEGE as a defiant symbol of hope. (chapter 32)
Jeremiah, once the harbinger of doom for the line of David, swears on behalf of God that the Davidic line will never end. (chapter 33)
King Jehoiakim bans Jeremiah from the Temple, so he hires a scribe named Baruch to write down all of his words on a scroll and read them there out loud. The king gets word of the disturbance and has the scroll burned. Jeremiah and Baruch simply produce another copy. (chapter 36)
The army of Egypt attacks Judah from the south, driving the Babylonian army temporarily back up North. When Jeremiah travels North to check it out, he is falsely accused of deserting to the enemy and is once again thrown into prison. (chapter 37)
Jeremiah is thrown into a cistern (basically a small well) by the king’s cronies but is rescued later on by a sympathetic eunuch, only to be thrown back in the palace jail. (chapter 38)
Jeremiah sits in prison until the day when Babylon finally makes a breach into Jerusalem. With the enemy at the door, the captain of the guard releases Jeremiah and gives him a choice: come with the rest of us to Babylon and I’ll look after you, or find a hiding place and stay in Jerusalem. Jeremiah chooses to stay. (chapter 40)
Jeremiah warns a group of terrified Judahites not to flee to Egypt, a popular destination for terrified Judahites. They consider his warning and then decide to go to Egypt, forcing Jeremiah to go with them. In Egypt, Jeremiah continue to rant against his idolatrous and unfaithful compatriots. (chapter 42-44)

Sadly, Jeremiah remains in Egypt and that’s the last we hear of him. The book ends with a few rants against Babylon and other enemies of Israel, and a final account of the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple, as well as a record of the three thousand or so citizens of Judah who were carried off into exile. A pathetic ending for a tragic book. And by the way, there’s another bible book called Lamentations, traditionally attributed to Jeremiah, which we may or may not get to so we’ll mention it now. It consists of several poems and prayers mourning the loss of Jerusalem and the Temple. Jeremiah’s authorship is, of course, in question, but it is clearly borne out of the same historical moment.

Of course, this is all just one side of the story. Next time we’ll meet Ezekiel, the closest thing to a leader for the people of Judah in Babylonian exile. His visions and words are surprising and strange, and his prophetic response to exile has some echoes of Jeremiah’s, with some additional innovations. It will also be our first opportunity to discuss APOCALYPTIC, which is very exciting indeed.

This has been BOOK, a bible podcast for everybody, and I have been Josh Way. If you enjoyed this podcast, I encourage you to share, like, tweet, tweep, kleep, blog, tumbl, stumble, chumble, and flooz it to your online friends and family. If you have any comments, questions or constructive feedback, email me at book@joshway.com. You can also leave a voicemail at 801-760-3013, and maybe I’ll answer it on the podcast. Read the BOOK blog and find more content at BOOK.JOSHWAY.COM. That’s it for me, Bible pals. I’ll catch you next time.

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Tags: babylon, bible, exile, jeremiah, lamentations, prophet

January 14, 2013 0

Episode 20 – Isaiah

By JoshWay in Blog, Podcast

[TRANSCRIPT:]

And thus begins the TWENTIETH installment of this thing called BOOK.

[INTRO MUSIC]

Welcome back to BOOK, a bible podcast for everybody. I’m Josh Way. If you’re just joining us, the premise of the show is simple: an honest and open-minded exploration of the contents of the Judeo-Christian bible with special attention to the history which produced the text and the literary form of the text itself. Here is a very brief recap of where we’ve come so far:

The first book of the bible is the Torah, divided in five scrolls in which the ancient family of Israel gave their own account of their transformation into a nation. After the Torah we looked at Joshua and Judges, which detailed the messy business of the people of Israel inhabiting the land that would be Israel. Ruth and Samuel told how Israel went about choosing kings, and Kings and Chronicles gave two very different perspectives on the national period and the performances of those kings. After a nasty civil war and a division into a northern and a southern kingdom, Israel’s national period came to an end, the northern kingdom being defeated by Assyria in the eighth century BCE and the southern falling to Babylon in the sixth.

After Kings and Chronicles we took a break from the historical narrative to examine some of the specialized literature of the bible: the poetry of the Psalms and the wisdom writings like Proverbs, Qohelet, and Job. Now we turn our gaze to yet another variety of biblical text, one which gives us a side door back into history, but from a very unique and easily misunderstood perspective. We’re going to read the writings of “the Prophets.”

So far we’ve seen prophets as characters in Israel’s historical pageant, and we even speculated that they are the likely authors or editors of the scrolls called “Kings.” Now we encounter several books written by individual prophets, or at least compiled from their public speaking by followers or assistants. Isaiah is the first of the “major” prophets to get his own book in the bible, and that text will be our focus today. First, a few words in review about prophets.

While most people today imagine prophets as hopped-up holy men roaming the street predicting the end of the world, their actual role was much more practical and relevant, even political. Prophets were less like far-off dreamers offering vague, cryptic pronouncements of gloom and hellfire, and more like pundits offering an analysis of an urgent, contemporary crisis. And most prophets weren’t delivering their missives to random citizens in the street, but rather pointing their fingers directly at kings. This is certainly true of Isaiah, who appears to have been an “official” prophet of the royal court of Judah during the reign of King Ahaz in the eighth century BCE. We saw him a couple of times in Kings.

Unlike prophets like Samuel and Elijah, we have little to no biographical information about Isaiah. He does not appear to be a priest, nor does he have any named career other than being a prophet of the court. The book which bears his name is long and dense, and does not have a friendly narrative structure. We often need to consult the corresponding history in Kings to bring it into focus. For purposes that will become apparent as we move along, we’re going to divide Isaiah’s scroll into two sections. The first consists of what we call chapters 1-39.

1 Isaiah, as we’ll call it, corresponds with the eighth century setting in which we met Isaiah in 2 Kings. The backdrop is the growing threat of the Assyrian empire and the bad choices of Judah’s kings. We get five whole chapters of straight-up, open-mic prophecy before we get any sort of introduction to Isaiah himself, but those five chapters tell us some interesting things about Isaiah. His message in this first part of the book is one of dire warning to the kingdom of Judah for losing its way. Most of the kings in his lifetime were corrupt and had rejected the traditional, Davidic, covenantal religion of Israel’s past. Here in chapter 1 Isaiah predicts drastic consequences for the once-great city of Jerusalem:

[21] How the faithful city has become a whore, she who was once full of justice!
Righteousness once lodged in her, but now murderers.
…
[23] Your rulers are rebels and cronies of thieves. Everyone loves a bribe and runs after gifts.
They do not bring justice to the orphan, and the widow’s cause does not come to them.
[24] Therefore the Lord declares, the LORD of hosts, the Mighty One of Israel:
“I will get satisfaction from my enemies and avenge myself on my foes.”
…
[27] Zion shall be redeemed by justice, and those in her who repent, by righteousness.
[28] But rebels and sinners shall be crushed together, and those who forsake the LORD will perish.

But Isaiah isn’t simply a crank, calling down fire and brimstone on all the fat cats. The second thread running throughout the first section of Isaiah is a salient hope that Judah will be restored to its former glory. This is from chapter 2:

[2] It shall come to pass in the latter days that the mountain of the house of the LORD shall be established as the highest of the mountains, and shall be lifted up above the hills; and all the nations shall flow to it, [3] and many peoples shall come, and say:
“Come, let us go up to the mountain of the LORD, to the house of the God of Jacob,
that he may teach us his ways and that we may walk in his paths.”
For out of Zion shall go the law, and the word of the LORD from Jerusalem.
[4] He shall judge between the nations, and shall decide disputes for many peoples;
and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks;
nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore.

Isaiah imagines a triumphant day, a day when not only will Judah be restored as “God’s mountain,” but it will be established as a shining beacon for the whole world, and when warfare between the nations of the earth will end. For some reason, in our own day, when people read and remember biblical prophecy, they only remember the gloom and doom stuff, and the hope is often overlooked. I’ll push that point even harder when we get to apocalyptic literature.

In both of those excerpts we observe one of the remarkable distinctives of Isaiah’s thinking and writing: his use of “Zion” or “mountain of God” imagery. Remember when we first talked about kings and prophets, we observed that they had two very different – and often conflicting – ways of looking at life, religion, and current events? One way of summarizing those viewpoints is the contrast between two mountains: SINAI and ZION. SINAI is the mountain of prophets, a lost location where God showed up briefly to deliver a message through his servant Moses. For prophets, God is transcendent, elusive, and always thwarting man’s expectations. ZION, on the other hand, is Jerusalem, the mountain of the palace and the temple, where God “permanently” established his authority on earth. For kings, God is present, immovable, and predictable.

And yet we find in Isaiah a prophet who frequently invokes ZION and refers to Israel’s God as “YHWH tsava’ot,” “LORD of hosts” – that is, the God who leads our armies to victory against our enemies. Isaiah is an extremely royal prophet, and his vision of Israel’s future doesn’t involve the dissolution or abandonment of Israel’s monarchy. The monarchy itself will be at the center of the nation’s rescue. More of that anon.

In chapter six we come to a very different sort of text, and something we might have expected at the beginning of the book. It’s the closest we get to an origin story for Isaiah. Give it a listen:

[6:1] In the year that King Uzziah died I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up; and the train of his robe filled the temple. [2] Above him stood the seraphim. Each had six wings: with two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. [3] And one called to another and said:

“Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts;
his presence fills the whole earth!”

[4] And the foundations of the thresholds shook at the voice of him who called, and the house was filled with smoke. [5] And I said: “Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts!”
[6] Then one of the seraphim flew to me, having in his hand a burning coal that he had taken with tongs from the altar. [7] And he touched my mouth and said: “Behold, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away, and your sin atoned for.”
[8] And I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” Then I said, “Here I am! Send me.”

Each of the major prophets gets what is referred to a “calling” episode, a description of the events which began their careers as God’s messengers. Isaiah’s is a strange vision with unearthly beings flying around the throne of Israel’s God. This is very much a precursor to the apocalyptic texts, in which outrageous symbolic images are employed to present ideas and realities which could not otherwise be communicated. In this case we have “seraphim,” which is the Hebrew word for “flames,” and so we strain to imagine beings made of flames, flitting around with six wings.

By the way, nitpicky side note: These are not angels. Angels in the bible, whatever else they are, are humanoid beings who are never said to have wings. Medieval European artistic interpretation has given us the ubiquitous image of little winged, naked baby angel, but that’s a messy mutation and cross-pollination of several distinct biblical images, with a little linguistic error thrown in for good measure. The word “cherub,” for example, was unknown to medieval rabbis who decided it must be Hebrew, che-ruv, “like a child,” and artists just ran with it. In truth the word derives from Akkadian and Babylonian, and describes a winged lion, the symbol of royal power in the ancient Near East. All of this should keep us humble as we attempt to affirm or dismiss any particular interpretation of the bible. OK, end of rant.

So Isaiah is enlisted to act as God’s messenger to Judah, and his “unclean lips” are purified by a piece of coal. Strange as it sounds to us, there is actually evidence of this very practice from the cultures surrounding ancient Israel. And what is the message Isaiah is to carry? Turns out it’s a very specific one for a very specific crisis. We discussed this is in great detail in our Christmas episode, because this is source of the famous “Immanuel” passage, wherein Isaiah heralds the birth of an important child. You can listen to that other podcast for an in-depth discussion of the New Testament treatment of this passage. Right now we just want to see how it works here in context.

Chapter 7 presents Isaiah’s words to King Ahaz, a confrontation described in 2 Kings 16. Judah is at war with Israel, which is in league with the neighboring state of Syria. Desperate and afraid, Ahaz seeks protection from the brutal and growing empire of Assyria. Isaiah insists that Judah must remain unaligned, and entreats Ahaz not to make a foolish alliance with a huge enemy just to stave off a small one. Here are Isaiah’s words to the king:

[13] And he said, “Hear then, O house of David! Is it too little for you to weary men, that you must weary God also? [14] Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. A virgin is with child and is about to bear a son, and will call him Immanuel. [15] By the time he knows to reject the bad and choose the good, the people will be eating curds and honey. [16] For before the boy knows how to refuse the bad and choose the good, the land whose two kings you dread will be deserted.”

Isaiah says, “don’t get in bed with these bad guys, just be patient and God will deal with them.” The image he employs to announce a hopeful future is the birth of a child, an image he picks up several times in the book. “A virgin is going to have a baby” is most likely a reference to a maiden of the court, to the imminent birth of a new king. Once more, Isaiah’s royal theology is showing. There is hope in a new king, hope that he won’t be as cowardly and reckless as Ahaz.

And lest we have trouble believing that Isaiah’s prophecy is meant primarily for his own day, he repeats it again in similar language in chapter 8:

[3] I was intimate with the prophetess, and she conceived and bore a son. And the LORD said to me, “Call his name Maher-shalal-hash-baz [which means ‘make haste to the plunder’]; [4] for before the boy knows how to cry ‘my father’ or ‘my mother,’ the wealth of Damascus and the spoil of Samaria will be carried away before the king of Assyria.”

And, wouldn’t you know it, Isaiah is proven to be right, according to the accounts of 2 Kings. The next king is Hezekiah, a sensible and faithful king, and in his lifetime Israel and Syria are both devastated by Assyria, and yet Assyria fails to conquer Judah.

Isaiah goes on to proclaim, in a famous passage in chapter 9, more hope for the future of Israel, once more employing the hopeful spectre of childbirth:

[2] The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light;
those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness, on them has light shone.
[3] You have multiplied the nation; you have increased its joy;
they rejoice before you as with joy at the harvest, as they are glad when they divide the spoil.
[4] For the yoke of his burden, and the staff for his shoulder,
the rod of his oppressor, you have broken as on the day of Midian.
[5] For every boot of the tramping warrior in battle tumult and every garment rolled in blood
will be burned as fuel for the fire.
[6] For to us a child is born, to us a son is given; and authority shall be on his shoulders,
and his name shall be called
“Mighty God is a Wonderful Counselor, The everlasting father is a peaceable ruler.”
[7] Of the increase of his government and of peace there will be no end,
on the throne of David and over his kingdom, to establish it and to uphold it
with justice and with righteousness from this time forth and forevermore.
The zeal of the LORD of hosts will do this.

This is another popular “messianic” text, and we’ll have a few words to say about “messiah” later in the podcast. For now, this is more typical Isaiah. God is going to rescue Israel, and turn things around. And he will not do this in spite of Israel’s throne, he will accomplish through the monarchy itself.

The rest of Isaiah’s “first” book consists of sharp warnings against wayward Judah AND its enemies (like Assyria, Babylon, Philistia, Moab, and others), peppered with hopeful anticipation of the vindication of David’s family – the rightful kings of Judah. Isaiah even predicts (or perhaps responds to) the Assyrian defeat and exile of the northern kingdom of Israel, promising that “a remnant shall return.” At the same time, he predicts a similar fate for Jerusalem, should its current kings not change their ways.

Then, in chapter 40, something happens. There is a palpable change in tone and orientation. The historical backdrop and the central message of Isaiah himself seem to shift. This is why we are identifying two “books” of Isaiah (though our Jewish and Christian bibles do not make any such division). While chapters 1-39 overflowed with warning and hope in the face of the eighth century crisis of Assyrian aggression, chapters 40-66 seem to bear a different message for a different time. This is from chapter 40:

[40:1] Comfort, comfort my people, says your God.
[2] Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and cry to her
that her warfare is ended, that her iniquity is pardoned,
that she has received from the LORD’s hand double for all her sins.
[3] A voice cries:
“In the wilderness prepare the way of the LORD;
make straight in the desert a highway for our God.”

It becomes clear as we read on that the crisis behind these chapters is no longer the fear of Judah in the face of the Assyrian threat, but the sorrow of the citizens of Judah who have been dragged off to exile in Babylon. Isaiah is preaching comfort to the people after the fall of Jerusalem, some two hundred years AFTER the Assyrian threat dissolved. This presents a potential problem for our reading of the book. Did Isaiah, after addressing the crisis of his own day, look into the future and predict the rise of Babylon, the destruction of Jerusalem, and the exile? Or did someone else write the Babylon material under his name?

This is only a huge problem if we have an overly simplistic and anachronistic notion of prophets and authorship; if we insist that a man named Isaiah must have sat down and wrote this entire book on a Tuesday afternoon in the presence of a notary public. The reality is that Isaiah the man, whoever he really was, did not necessarily write any of this material. It is possible – perhaps likely in his case, according to scholarship – that Isaiah’s words and ideas were captured and recorded by a group of students, personal disciples of the prophet. Is it possible that Isaiah gained some insight into Judah’s future? Absolutely. But it’s also possible that there was an “Isaianic” school of prophecy which preserved his ideas and his message for subsequent generations, and that this group is responsible for the message of hope found in the “second” book of Isaiah.

And what is that message of hope? Well, remember Isaiah’s response to the Assyrian crisis: hope would spring from the line of David. God would use the monarchy and kings like Hezekiah to rescue Judah. Well, that was at a time when Judah inhabited the land and Jerusalem stood secure. Now, Jerusalem has been razed to the ground and the people of Judah are scattered throughout the pagan world in exile. Appeals to Zion and kings and Jerusalem are tragically pointless. The author of Isaiah must find new and innovative words of hope in these devastating new circumstances. Among the words of comfort and encouragement, an interesting new thread develops. Chapter 42 begins like this:

[42:1] Behold my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen, in whom my soul delights;
I have put my Spirit upon him; he will bring forth justice to the nations.

Isaiah imagines a mysterious “servant” who becomes a central presence throughout the rest of the book. This is chapter 53:

[3] He was despised and rejected by men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief;
and as one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not.
[4] Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows;
yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted.
[5] But he was wounded for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities;
upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we were healed.

Instead of a victorious king, Isaiah now envisions a lowly, suffering nobody. A “man of sorrows” who seems to embody Israel itself and all of its troubles. His suffering, which is their suffering, will be the means by which God rescues and restores his people. This is one of the foundational strands of what will be known as “messianic” expectation (though the word “mashiach” does not appear in the Hebrew Bible). We’ll have a lot more to say about messianic expectation when we examine the New Testament gospels and their frequent appeals to Isaiah. For now it’s sufficient to observe that the “suffering servant” of Isaiah, like the humble “son of man” we’ll meet in Daniel, is the embodiment of the hope that Judah’s exile will be ended, and Jerusalem be restored.

And the return from exile is what Isaiah’s message is all about. Here’s one last passage, from chapter 55:

[10] “For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven and do not return there but water the earth,
making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater,
[11] so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty,
but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it.
[12] “For you shall go out in joy and be led forth in peace;
the mountains and the hills before you shall break forth into singing,
and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands.
[13] Instead of the thorn shall come up the cypress; instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle;
and it shall make a name for the LORD, an everlasting sign that shall not be cut off.”

Verse 11 here – the bit about “my word shall not return to me empty” – is often used today as a sort of self-authorizing defense of the bible, since many Christians refer to the bible as “the word of God.” Not only is that anachronistic, it misses the point of the whole passage. The “word of God” here is not “the bible,” but the actual word, the will of Israel’s God, specifically his plan to bring Israel back from exile. The restoration of the nation is depicted in agricultural terms: God will plant Judah back in the land like a seed, and it will grow and prosper. The weeds of destruction will die and the foliage of new life will spring up.

There’s a lot more we could say about Isaiah, but let’s wrap up our discussion with some concluding observations. Questions about authorship and New Testament invocations have dominated modern discussions about Isaiah. I hope in our overview we’ve allowed the original voice of the text to be heard. Whatever else Isaiah – or his students – might have been saying about the near or the distant future, the primary message is clear: hope for right now. Hope for those quivering in the shadow of a violent empire. Comfort for those dragged from their home into forced exile. We do well to remember that texts like Isaiah were not written to fuel theological debates in future millennia, but to answer true human suffering in the present.

Next we’ll look at two other “major” prophets of Israel, Jeremiah and Ezekiel, both offering their own response to the horrors of exile, one at home in devastated Jerusalem, and one in the strange land of Babylon. The literature they produced is harrowing and beautiful.

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Tags: ahaz, assyria, bible, exile, hezekiah, isaiah, israel, judah, kings, prophet

December 18, 2012 1

Supplement – Christmas Special!

By JoshWay in Blog, Podcast

Hello, and welcome to a BOOK podcast supplement. I’m Josh Way. Today: it’s our first Christmas Special! Now, what could a non-denominational podcast like this one have to say about this quasi-Christian-pagan holiday celebration? Well, we’re interested in the text of the Judeo-Christian bible, and that’s where we’ll be interacting with Christmas. And first let me just say on a personal note that I am a big fan of Christmas, that it has always been a big part of my life experience as both a religious observance and a secular tradition. I say that now so that some of the points I’m going to put forth today won’t be taken in the wrong spirit.

So: where is Christmas in the bible? Well, the simple answer is that it’s not there. The events of Jesus’ birth are there, of course. But it’s quite surprising given the church’s intense focus on the Christmas “season” how little physical space the Christmas events occupy in the gospels, and how completely absent is any evidence that the early church celebrated the birth of Jesus. Jump cut to our day, when most American Christians regard Christmas as a central and load-bearing pillar of their faith. The history of the Christmas holiday is (thankfully) outside the scope of this podcast, so instead I’d like to take a brief survey of the Christmas material in the bible, and then highlight a few peculiarities which open up some interesting discussions.

Again, it might surprise you just how light the “Christmas” material in the gospels is. All in all, we get eight short verses in Matthew’s gospel, and a chapter and a half in Luke’s. That’s it! The gospels of Mark and John begin with an adult Jesus launching his prophetic campaign. The birth of Jesus is not mentioned anywhere else in the gospels OR in the epistles which comprise the rest of the Greek New Testament. You would think the virgin birth of the holy infant would be an important piece of the theological argument put forth by Paul and the other authors of scripture, but it’s just not there. All of this is kind of shocking when you consider the cultural repercussions of Christmas in our time.

Of course, we’ll discuss the four gospels in great detail on future podcasts, but in terms of today’s topic, we can see why and how Matthew and Luke incorporated the nativity material into their writings. Luke is the most “investigative” of the four gospel writers, and he presents material culled from interviews with the surviving witnesses to Jesus’ life, including Mary his mother. This probably explains why Luke offers the most detailed account of the Christmas story, and why so much of that story is about the experience and reaction of Mary. Meanwhile, Matthew’s gospel is a Jewish work through and through, and every word of it is part of a program to prove Jesus of Nazareth as the Jewish moshiach, messiah, in Greek the “christ.” And so that is his only thought in presenting his very brief account of the virgin birth. This is where we engage in a rather delicate discussion. But first, here is the entirety of Matthew’s nativity account:

[18] Now the birth of Jesus Christ took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit. [19] And her husband Joseph, being a just man and unwilling to put her to shame, resolved to divorce her quietly. [20] But as he considered these things, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, “Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary as your wife, for that which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. [21] She will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.” [22] All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet:

[23] “Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son,
and they shall call his name Immanuel”

(which means, God with us). [24] When Joseph woke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him: he took his wife, [25] but knew her not until she had given birth to a son. And he called his name Jesus.
(Matthew 1:18-25 ESV)

We’ll have more to say about the format and argument of Matthew’s gospel later on, but today I want to focus on his use of the Hebrew Bible, specifically his quotation of Isaiah Chapter 7: “Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Immanuel.” There is no mistake that Matthew is claiming that Jesus’ birth was miraculous. What is frequently called into question is whether or not the Isaiah passage constitutes a prediction of that miracle.

This is a debate that won’t go away, and it is typically reduced down to a debate about a single word: the word translated “virgin” in the Isaiah text. “Liberal” interpreters on one side indicating that the Hebrew word almah can be translated “young woman” as easily as “virgin,” and “conservatives” on the other side insisting it MUST mean “virgin.” What drives me bonkers about the whole discussion is that both sides act as if the broader context of Isaiah (and for that matter Matthew) was unavailable or irrelevant. It is both available AND relevant. So let’s do some homework!

The very LEAST we can do is take a serious look at what is really going on in Isaiah chapter 7. And so, we shall. In Isaiah 7, the prophet confronts Ahaz, a wicked king of Judah who is about to make a very foolish alliance. The full details of this can be found in 2 Kings 16, but the bottom line is that the kingdom of Israel is split in two, and Israel to the north has joined forces with Syria against the southern kingdom of Judah. Frightened and impatient, Ahaz looks to pay a protection tribute to the massive empire of Assyria. Assyria was a formidable force which was becoming a superpower. Isaiah warns Ahaz against this cowardly alliance which betrayed a lack of trust in Israel’s God, and which would surely make political trouble for Judah down the road.

And that’s the history behind the exchange in question. This is Isaiah 7 and verse 10:

[10] Again the LORD spoke to Ahaz,

That is, through the prophet Isaiah.

[11] “Ask a sign of the LORD your God; let it be deep as Sheol or high as heaven.” [12] But Ahaz said, “I will not ask, and I will not put the LORD to the test.”

Ahaz hides behind a mask of religious piety: “I wouldn’t dare put God to the test by asking him to protect us!”

[13] And [Isaiah] said, “Hear then, O house of David! Is it too little for you to weary men, that you weary God also? [14] Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name God-with-us [Immanuel].

This is the bit quoted by Matthew. Remember, this is in response to a very imminent crisis faced by Judah at this particular moment. Isaiah wants to convince Ahaz that he does not need to buy the protection of Assyria, that God will protect Judah. And how do we know he will protect us? Because a baby is going to be born. Not some far off future baby, but the next king. “The virgin” here likely refers to one of the virgins of the court – one of the young maidens designated to bear offspring for the king. Isaiah is talking about Hezekiah, the next king of Judah. As for the name “Immanuel,” this is a typical prophetic device employed repeatedly by Isaiah, who likes to give children meaningful names (eg. his own children “A Remnant Shall Return” and “The Child of the Sign.”).

He continues:

[15] “By the time he has learned to reject bad and choose good, people will be feeding on curds and honey. [16] For before the boy knows how to refuse the bad and choose the good, the land whose two kings you dread will be deserted. [17] The LORD will bring upon you and upon your people and upon your father’s house such days as have not come since the day that Ephraim [that is, Israel] departed from Judah.”

“Before this kid can tie his shoelaces,” the prophet says, “the people will be feasting on the spoils of the land again.” By the time this kid grows up, your enemies will be defeated and God will restore our fortunes. Down to verse 20:

[20] In that day the Lord will shave with a razor that is hired beyond the River—with the king of Assyria—the head and the hair of the feet, and it will sweep away the beard also.

This is weird language, but basically Isaiah says that God is already planning to use Assyria’s treachery to wipe out Judah’s enemies, and Ahaz need only wait patiently and keep the faith. The remarkable thing about this entire prophecy is that it ALL CAME TO PASS. Hezekiah was born, he wasn’t cowardly like Ahaz, and in his lifetime Assyria destroyed the northern kingdom of Israel. Because he was faithful, says 2 Kings 18, King Sennacherib and the armies of Assyria were not able to defeat Judah, and were themselves defeated at the hands of Babylon.

Now let’s get something straight before we go any further: We’ll examine Isaiah in detail eventually on BOOK, and his writing is chock full of messianic prophecy, claims and expectations about a future king who would one day deliver all of Israel and usher in “God’s new age.” Chapters 9 and 53 are famous examples. However, in light of what we’ve just read, I don’t think we can call Isaiah 7 an explicitly “messianic” passage. It’s a word from a prophet about an urgent crisis, one that was fulfilled within its own time.

So now what do we do with Matthew? Is he a crackpot? A liar? is he twisting Hebrew scripture for his own agenda? I don’t think so. I think he’s smart. I think he knows exactly what’s going on in the Isaiah passage, and I think WE’RE the ones who’ve been missing the forest for the trees (or rather, for that one tree).

Remember earlier I said that Matthew’s gospel is all and only about Jesus being the messiah. It’s an argument. We’ll go into much more detail about what exactly a messiah is and isn’t in later shows, but for now here’s the thing: we (meaning, Christians and modern Westerners) have defined “messiah” backwards from Jesus, so we think it means one who is born miraculously of a virgin and who dies on a cross. But, working forward from the Hebrew Scriptures, we see that “messiah” meant neither of those things. “Messiah” meant “the coming king who will usher in God’s new age and save Israel and thus the world.”

If this is Matthew’s starting point, then what he’s doing with Isaiah becomes easier to decipher. “Virgin” is his entry point into the prophecy, but I don’t think it’s the sum of his argument. I think Matthew is saying this: As in the days of Isaiah, Judah lives in the shadow of great evil, from Rome and from within, and there’s a new king in the belly of a virgin who faces a choice – be a coward like Ahaz and get in bed with the bad guys, or be like Hezekiah and trust God to rescue us and deal with our so-called enemies. Says Matthew, not only will Jesus take the righteous path, he will be the true “Immanuel,” the true king who brings about God’s ultimate purposes.

Matthew DOES insist that Jesus was born of a virgin who had miraculously conceived. That’s not in question. This is really an issue about the fulfillment of prophecy. And I think that allowing the Isaiah passage its full, original context takes us deeper into Matthew’s overall agenda than we might otherwise have wandered. I understand why Christians are resistant to this line of thinking. It’s much easier to deal with Isaiah as a sound bite and a proof text than as a living, breathing text with its own context and agenda. But given the choice I’d always rather dig deeper and let the text breathe than dash through it with my fingers in my ears.

OK, let’s put that can of worms back on the shelf and look at just a couple more items. These are not nearly as provocative, just some nativity-related factoids. I have to give credit on this first one to my seminary professor and mentor R. Bryan Widbin, who first presented it to me. We all know this familiar plot point from the nativity story (from Luke chapter 2):

And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in swaddling cloths and laid him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn.

The image is ubiquitous: Mary and Joseph, weary from the long journey to Bethlehem and desperately in need of a place to deliver their baby, knock on the innkeeper’s door only to be told there’s no vacancy, and they are forced to stay out in back with the animals in the stable. That always struck me as a little strange, that a crowning woman would be denied a warm place to deliver her baby. Well, our interpretation of a verse may, in THIS CASE, boil down to a single word.

The Greek word kataluma, traditionally translated “inn” or “lodging place,” is actually a much more specific word, and is better translated “upper room.” This is the same word which describes the dining room where Jesus takes his disciples for a final Passover meal in Luke Chapter 22. This isn’t a public place to rent a room, it’s a room in a family home. A room for special meals and visiting guests.

Mary and Joseph are said to be visiting Joseph’s hometown of Bethlehem during a Roman census, and scholarship suggests that it was also the time of sukkot, the feast of tabernacles. This means that all of Joseph’s family would have been coming home for the holiday and government mandated headcount, and it makes sense that the kataluma would have been full of aunts and uncles who got there first. But surely their own kin wouldn’t have kicked them out into the cold to have their baby! So what’s up with the manger? Turns out, this word also has a more nuanced connotation.

A “manger” in this setting would likely have been a hewn stone trough INSIDE the house, where the “special” sacrificial animals were kept. Beasts of burden and flocks would have been tied up and penned outdoors, but spotless, consecrated animals set apart for sacrifice were kept close to the family. If this is correct, Mary and Joseph weren’t left out in the cold, they were actually invited into the first floor dwelling where the nuclear family lived with their special animals. And, of course, the placement of the newborn Jesus among these critters carries a certain theological weight…

One last topic. Another standard issue Christmas trope is the visit of the “wise men” from foreign lands. This account only appears in Matthew’s gospel, immediately following his short nativity text. Here it is from Matthew 2:

[2:1] Now after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king, behold, wise men from the east came to Jerusalem, [2] saying, “Where is he who has been born king of the Jews? For we saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him.” [3] When Herod the king heard this, he was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him; [4] and assembling all the chief priests and scribes of the people, he inquired of them where the Christ was to be born. [5] They told him, “In Bethlehem of Judea, for so it is written by the prophet:

[6] “‘And you, O Bethlehem, in the land of Judah,
are by no means least among the rulers of Judah;
for from you shall come a ruler
who will shepherd my people Israel.’”

[7] Then Herod summoned the wise men secretly and ascertained from them what time the star had appeared. [8] And he sent them to Bethlehem, saying, “Go and search diligently for the child, and when you have found him, bring me word, that I too may come and worship him.” [9] After listening to the king, they went on their way. And behold, the star that they had seen when it rose went before them until it came to rest over the place where the child was. [10] When they saw the star, they rejoiced exceedingly with great joy. [11] And going into the house they saw the child with Mary his mother, and they fell down and worshiped him. Then, opening their treasures, they offered him gifts, gold and frankincense and myrrh. [12] And being warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they departed to their own country by another way.
(Matthew 2:1-12 ESV)

This story is so familiar that we have lost sight of how completely WEIRD it is! The moshiach, promised of old is said to be born on Judean soil, but instead of throngs of Israelites coming to his crib to bow down and welcome him, he is visited by three pagan astronomers. The “wise men from the East” are not only foreigners from outside the covenant, they are – according to the covenant – practitioners of wickedness, reading the stars as they do. In this story, they are portrayed as the righteous ones, while Herod the king and the priests and scribes are plotting and scheming against the child.

I don’t have any real insight or a surprising revelation about this story. All we need to do is look at it and think about it to see what Matthew is doing. He is making his case against the current Judean administration, the Roman puppet-king Herod and the corrupt religious establishment, and saying something radical about the life of Jesus: If Israel won’t recognize him, says Matthew, pagan astronomers will get the job done. This is a story of sharp condemnation on the one hand, and subversive inclusivity on the other. Like Rahab and Ruth, another instance of the “righteous pagan” who swoops in to get the job done when Israel fails. We’ll see a whole lot more of this type of thing when we take a complete look at Matthew’s scroll later on.

And that’s our Christmas special, friends. I hope you enjoyed it. Thanks so much for listening to BOOK in 2012, and hope you’ll continue to join me in 2013. We have a lot more text to read, and a lot more to discover about history, literature, and the world and stuff.

Merry Christmas, Belated Happy Hanukkah, and Happy New Year to you all.

This has been BOOK, a bible podcast for everybody. Find more at book.joshway.com. See you soon, pals!

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Tags: bible, christmas, holiday, isaiah, kataluma, magi, nativity, virgin birth, wise men

December 16, 2012 0

Episode 19 – Song of Songs

By JoshWay in Blog, Podcast

[TRANSCRIPT:]

Sex, sex, sex, sex, sex. Now that I have your attention, BOOK.

[intro music]

Hello, and welcome to BOOK, a bible podcast for everybody. I’m Josh Way. Those unfamiliar with the bible might be surprised to learn that there is an entire book in it about sex. Perhaps even more surprising is that this book is not a collection of prudish warnings about the dangers of sex, nor a screed against adultery, nor an ode to the wonders of procreation. It’s a collection of erotic poetry about two young lovers enjoying each other. It’s called Shir Hashirim in Hebrew, “The Song of Songs.”

Historically Song of Songs is another hot potato. It bears the inscription “shir hashirim asher leshlomo,” “The Song of Songs which is of Solomon.” And as with those Psalms which are “of David,” we are left to wonder what exactly it means. Did Solomon write it? Traditional interpretation says yes. Case closed. Was it written FOR Solomon, or perhaps ABOUT Solomon? Scholarship leans more in this direction.

The Semitic literary tradition is full of books written in the names of famous figures. It is neither controversial nor a stretch to suggest that Solomon is being invoked here by a later author cashing in on his reputation as an international playboy. Solomon is only mentioned a couple of times in the text, and not in the most flattering light. There is also the issue of the actual Hebrew text, which appears to be from an era much later than Solomon’s (somewhere around 900 BCE). Conclusion: authorship unknown.

Because, like Job and Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs is not a traditional historical or biographical narrative, we do best not to force any particular context onto it. It is an ancient Israelite poem, or perhaps a short drama, and it is about erotic love. In form it looks very much like Egyptian love poetry, which is fascinating given Solomon’s betrothal to a daughter of Pharaoh, but there we go with the authorship debate again.

The short book, divided in modern bibles into eight chapters, is a back-and-forth flirtation and profession of erotic intent between a young woman and a young man with occasional references to the “girls of Jerusalem.” Here are the opening exchanges. The young woman says:

O give me the kisses of your mouth,
For your love is more delightful than wine.
Your ointment yields a sweet fragrance,
Your name is like the finest oil –
Therefore virgins love you.
Draw me after you, let’s run!
The king has brought me to his chambers.
(1:1-4)

The reference here to the young man as “king” is most likely a playful tease. When the real king is mentioned in a couple chapters, we’ll see that he is a distant figure. The young man responds:

I compare you, my love,
To a mare from Pharaoh’s chariots:
Your cheeks are lovely with ornaments,
Your neck with strings of jewels.
(1:9-10)

She answers:

While my king was on his couch,
My perfume gave forth its fragrance.
My beloved is to me a bag of myrrh
Lodged between my breasts.
My beloved is to me a spray of henna blossoms
From the vineyards of En-gedi.
(1:12-14)

The lovers exchange compliments and confess their attraction for each other, and things begin to heat up in chapter two, when she says this:

His left hand was under my head,
His right arm embraced me.
I adjure you, O girls of Jerusalem,
By gazelles or by the does of the field,
Do not wake or rouse
Love until it pleases!
(2:6-7)

After what sounds like a rather intimate encounter, the tone of the poem shifts:

Hark! My beloved! Here he comes,
Leaping over mountains,
Bounding over hills.
My beloved is like a gazelle.
Or like a young stag.
There he stands behind our wall,
Gazing through the window,
Peering through the lattice.
(2:8-9)

Suddenly the lovers are not together, but she is anticipating his swift approach. By chapter three, however, he is off the scene, and she is left to pine for her beloved:

Upon my couch at night I sought the one I love —
I sought, but found him not.
“I must rise and roam the town,
Through the streets and through the squares;
I must seek the one I love.”
I sought but found him not.
(3:1-2)

The lovers are reunited, and once again the young woman implores the girls of Jerusalem, “Do not wake or rouse Love until it pleases!” Then we come to the appearance of King Solomon:

There goes Solomon’s couch,
Encircled by sixty warriors
Of the warriors of Israel,
All of them trained in warfare,
Skilled in battle,
Each with sword on thigh
Because of terror by night.
King Solomon made himself a carriage
Of wood from Lebanon.
He made its posts of silver,
Its back of gold,
Its seat of purple wool.
Within, it was decked with love
By the girls of Jerusalem.
O girls of Zion, go forth
And gaze upon King Solomon
Wearing the crown that his mother
Gave him on his wedding day,
On his day of bliss.
(3:7-11)

There’s a heading in my Christian Bible over this section that says “King Solomon arrives for his wedding.” That’s part of an interpretive scheme we’ll discuss more later, but basically it presumes that Solomon himself is the young man in the poem and is now seen arriving at his wedding. But that’s not the explicit tone of the passage, and there’s another way to read this. As the young woman is enthralled in passion with her lover, she tells the silly “girls of Jerusalem” to go ahead and gawk at the king with all of his pomp and riches, while she will remain in the arms of her beloved. In this there are echoes of Qoheleth, with its message that wisdom and riches are but vanity, and the enjoyment of love is the only real pursuit.

Chapter four finds the lovers pouring out more flattery upon each other:

Your eyes are like doves! [4:1]
Your teeth are like a flock of ewes! [4:2]
Your lips are like a crimson thread! [4:3]
Your neck is like the tower of David! [4:4]
Your breasts are like two fawns, twins grazing in the lilies! [4:5]

In chapter five, the cycle of chapter two repeats: the young man leaves and she must search for him. In chapter six she finds him in his garden, which becomes a metaphor for their love. In chapter seven the young man describes how he intends to express his love for the young woman:

How fair you are, how beautiful!
O Love, with all its rapture!
Your stately form is like the palm,
Your breasts are like clusters of fruit.
I say: Let me climb the palm,
Let me take hold of its branches;
Let your breasts be like clusters of grapes,
Your breath like the fragrance of apples,
And your mouth like choicest wine.
Let it flow to my beloved as new wine
Gliding over lips and teeth.
(7:7-10)

In the final chapter, various metaphors are employed to describe the passionate love at the center of the book:

Let me be a seal upon your heart, Like the seal upon your hand.
For love is fierce as death, Passion is mighty as Sheol;
Its darts are darts of fire, A blazing flame.
(8:6)

Says the poet, love is an unstoppable force like death itself, and it deserves the same reverence.

Vast floods cannot quench love, Nor rivers drown it.
If a man offered all his wealth for love, He would be laughed to scorn.
(8:7)

Once again there are shades of Qoheleth. All the wealth (and work, and wisdom, and stature) in the world cannot begin to approach the value of this love. And here is perhaps the most interesting metaphor, at the very close of the book:

Solomon had a vineyard
In Baal-hamon.
He had to post guards in the vineyard:
A man would give for its fruit
A thousand pieces of silver.
I have my very own vineyard:
You may have the thousand, O Solomon,
And the guards of the fruit two hundred!
O you who linger in the garden,
A lover is listening;
Let me hear your voice.
“Hurry, my beloved,
Swift as a gazelle or a young stag,
To the hills of spices!”
(8:11-14)

Solomon had a vineyard so desirable that he had to post guards, and people would pay premium prices for just a taste. I have my own vineyard, says the young woman, my sexuality, and there’s no price high enough to let anyone but my lover in.

And that’s the Song of Songs. All that’s left is to examine the peculiar problem it has presented to interpreters in both the Jewish and Christian traditions. Both have struggled with its very appearance within the canon of scripture. What do we do with a book that is, on the surface, completely and exclusively about sexuality? For many, the answer was NOTHING, and attempts were made in Jewish and Christian circles to exclude Song of Songs from the canon. Defenders appeared on both sides, however, and solutions were proposed.

On the Jewish side, a renowned rabbi named Akiva ben Joseph declared in the first century C.E. that Song of Songs should not be rejected but embraced by Jews and celebrated as an extended metaphor for the love of God for his people Israel. His suggestion was taken to heart, and Song of Songs became a popular scripture reading at weddings and certain feasts.

Later, Protestant Reformer Martin Luther would make his own defense of Song of Songs, using the text’s Davidic connotations to put forth a messianic reading that turned it into a celebration of Jesus and his love for the church. This is now the default Christian interpretation of the book. Of course, this means that the text has to be read in a very specific way. Solomon MUST be the author, and the intimate interludes described in the book MUST be understood within the context of a marriage. Hence the headings in my ESV bible: “The Bride Confesses Her Love”, “Solomon Arrives For The Wedding,” and so on.

We already discussed the reasons that Solomonic authorship is doubted. As for the “wedding night” context for the poem, I have two comments: On the one hand, an Israelite love poem is very unlikely to depict sex outside of a marital situation. On the other hand, we must be honest and acknowledge that there isn’t a word in the text that suggests such a context. And even if Martin Luther had his druthers, a wedding of King Solomon is hardly the place to celebrate biblical sexual ideals.

Personally, I have no issue with the idea of Song of Songs as a metaphor for divine love, but I must insist that we first and foremost recognize what it is at face value: an exploration and celebration of human sexuality. That’s it. That’s square one. The rush to place it in some other context betrays an unhealthy squeamishness with the very idea of sex. For myself, I find it endlessly reassuring that the bible is so forthcoming and candid on topics like this.

OK, personal story time:

As a young kid I went to a private Christian school, and once a group of us got into trouble on the playground for reading Song of Songs and giggling at the “naughty” parts. A few months later, the school was ravaged by a sex scandal involving a pastor and a secretary, and I was mercifully rescued and released into the public school system. Now that I look back, the irony of the situation is not lost on me. We kids were told that we shouldn’t read Song of Songs because it was inappropriate for us, that we couldn’t grasp the sexual material in the holy way in which it was intended. Meanwhile, the sexual politics among the adults at the school was rotting it all away from the inside. Now, look, BOOK isn’t about preaching or moralizing, so I won’t get into it too deep, but suffice to say the honest take on human sexuality and commitment found in Song of Songs was exactly what all of us needed – kids and adults alike. We all needed to know that sex isn’t some dirty, shameful secret OR some holy, neutered metaphor. It’s real, and it’s not absent from the portrait of humanity sketched out by the bible. OK, this has gotten way too personal and way too preachy…

Well, that’s gonna do it for us today. Next week is Christmas, so I’ll be taking a short break to enjoy the holiday. You do the same, whatever holidays you intend to celebrate. For Jesus, it was Chanukah (in John 10:22-23).

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Tags: bible, erotic, love, poetry, sex, solomon, song of songs

December 10, 2012 0

Episode 18 – Wisdom Part 2: The Book of Job

By JoshWay in Blog, Podcast

[TRANSCRIPT:]

[south park clip]

The story of Job perplexes modern readers perhaps more than any other part of the bible, with the possible exception of Revelation. Where and how does this outrageous story fit into the rest of the bible, and is its message really the one most religious teachers today insist it is? If you would like some pithy, scripted answers to these and other questions about Job, you have downloaded the correct podcast. This is BOOK.

[INTRO MUSIC]

Hello, and welcome to BOOK, a bible podcast for everybody. I’m Josh Way. I was earnestly excited to get to this particular episode, until it came time to actually research and write it. Then I remembered: oh yeah, Job is a difficult book. It’s long, the subject matter is grim, the scholarship surrounding it is murky, and traditional readings tend to either whitewash it or throw it in the trash. And then there’s the whole “satan” thing. OK, here we go…

If you’re unfamiliar with Job, the South Park clip we heard at the top is actually a pretty faithful summary. A “righteous” man named Job becomes the pawn in a bet between God and “the satan,” to see how much suffering it would take to make a good man curse God. Job’s family, his herds, and his property are destroyed, and he himself is stricken with painful sores. After a lengthy ordeal and seemingly endless discussion between Job and his friends, God relents and restores the poor man’s health and property. He even gives him some new children. Happy ending, right? I guess…?

But that’s exactly how I have been taught to read Job all of my life. I have sat through many sermons and lessons about Job that go like this: “Job suffered, as we all will, but he never cursed God and so God blessed him in the end. Let us do likewise.” Not only is that conclusion deeply unsatisfying, but that reading of the story is downright suspect. Can a new family really be considered a replacement for a dead one? What about the shocking implications of God making a wager with “satan?” And is it true that Job never curses God? Was the point of the whole thing? We’ll see.

So, we’ve got some homework to do. As usual, our goal is to understand the book of Job through the lenses of HISTORY and LITERATURE. Unfortunately, in this case, neither is easy or clear cut, but here’s what we have to work with. In terms of HISTORY, Job is not tethered to any known time or place in ancient Israel. We don’t even know if Job was an Israelite. There is no genealogy nor any biographical information, no “in the time of the judges” or “during the reign of Jehoiachin…” All it says is this:

There was a man in the land of Uz whose name was Job, and that man was blameless and upright, one who feared God and turned away from evil.

“The land of Uz” is all we get, and it’s not very helpful. “Uz” is not a known place in ancient Israel, though it may be a family designation (Abraham had both ancestors AND descendents named “Uz”). Unlike all the historical narratives in the Hebrew Bible, we have no specific time, no specific place. And scholars can’t even agree on the general timeframe for the book’s writing. The text of Job, which borrows words from other ancient languages like Akkadian, was once thought to be the oldest in the bible. But today a growing consensus says that Job was actually written very late in Israel’s national history. At the end of the day, we just don’t have very much to go on.

Traditional religious readings haven’t considered this a problem, since it’s enough for most people that Job is a character in a bible book. But the lack of historical or covenantal context is a big deal for us as we struggle to unlock the text. The biggest ramification of this, in light of the book’s problematic content, is that we are not necessarily obligated to read this as a “literal” or “historical” text. Or – to put it another way – we are not obligated to fit Job into the covenantal history of Israel. This story about “a man” could very well be a parable or a drama of some kind, an exercise in wisdom. And now we’re moving into our second sandbox, that of LITERATURE.

The lack of historical nuance is enough to raise questions, but the issue of genre really gets us moving in the right direction. The problem for modern readers of Job is that we’re distracted and placated by the short, somewhat trite little narrative bits at the beginning and end of the scroll, but we don’t so much care for the many long chapters of discourse which comprise the bulk of it. And this isn’t simple conversational dialog, it is verse. Job is a long poetic debate framed by a simplistic narrative which sets the parameters for the discussion. This is an ancient genre which is unfamiliar to us: a debate drama, in which characters who represent different philosophical points of view come together to meet minds on a certain topic. And in Job, the central question has to do with suffering and the character of God.

Here’s the big idea: Job is one of the few biblical explorations of something called THEODICY. Theodicy is the question of justifying God and his character or actions. You’d expect that there would be much more of this in the bible, but it’s actually rather rare. And in fact, we’ll see that Job isn’t exactly a traditional theodicy, for reasons we’ll explore. Job takes the problem of human suffering – exemplified by the central character – and subjects it to the full scrutiny of Israel’s wisdom. The conclusions are unexpected and disconcerting, but we’re getting ahead of ourselves.

We can’t talk about the Job debate without properly setting the stage, and we can’t do that without talking about “the satan.” Here’s what the scroll says, in chapter 1 and verse 6:

[6] Now there was a day when the sons of the elohim came to present themselves before YHWH, and the satan also came among them. [7] YHWH said to the satan, “From where have you come?” The satan answered YHWH and said, “I have been roaming all over the earth.” [8] And YHWH said to the satan, “Have you considered my servant Job, that there is none like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man, who fears God and turns away from evil?” [9] Then the satan answered YHWH and said, “Does Job fear God for no reason? [10] Have you not put a hedge around him and his house and all that he has, on every side? You have blessed the work of his hands, and his possessions have increased in the land. [11] But stretch out your hand and touch all that he has, and he will curse you to your face.” [12] And YHWH said to the satan, “Behold, all that he has is in your hand. Only against him do not stretch out your hand.” So the satan went out from the presence of YHWH.

I’ve been very careful in the translation of the names and titles in this passage to help us sort it all out. One day the “sons of the elohim” came before YHWH, Israel’s God. “Elohim” you may recall is a flexible word in Hebrew which can sometimes refer to God himself, sometimes to a host of “gods,” or – as in this case – to the “council of God,” the divine beings which serve YHWH and accomplish the work of heaven, whatever it may be. Presumably, the first readers of this text would have understood this idea more clearly, whether it was a mythological trope or a literal interpretation (or revelation!) of what was actually going on in heaven. This particular language is not used frequently in the bible, so we are left somewhat in the dark. The sons of the elohim are accompanied by “the satan,” about whom we must now say a few words.

When modern readers hear the word “satan,” they immediately think of something very specific: the Devil, the Serpent, Pitch, Old Gooseberry, the personal enemy of God. But the reality is that the concept of hasatan, “the accuser” in Hebrew, has undergone an evolution through time, and even from one end of the bible to the other. We haven’t talked about the satan on BOOK to this point, simply because it hasn’t been mentioned in the text (except for one little bit we passed over in Chronicles).

Here in Job, hasatan is one of the elohim, a member of God’s council, who has been “roaming the earth.” He is not God’s equal and opposite adversary, not the master of hell and the underworld. He’s just a heavenly staff member, the “accuser,” whose job is apparently to dole out trouble on the earth. In that capacity he has an audience with God himself and they have a chat. Indeed, they make a wager, and Job’s troubles begin. A host of troubles are visited upon Job. Invaders destroy his herds and kill his servants, fire destroys his flocks, and all of his ten children are killed when the house they are feasting in collapses. This is his reaction:

[20] Job arose and tore his robe and shaved his head and fell on the ground and worshiped. [21] And he said, “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return. The LORD has given, and the LORD has taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD.”
[22] In all this Job did not sin or charge God with wrong.

YHWH announces that he has won the bet, but hasatan insists that Job will break if the next tragedy befalls his own body. God agrees, as long as the man is not killed. Job is stricken with painful sores and sits in misery, scratching his boils with a piece of broken pottery. His wife offers him some helpful advice:

[2:9] Then his wife said to him, “Do you still hold fast your integrity? Curse God and die!” [10] But he said to her, “Spoken like a shameless woman! Shall we receive good from God, and not receive the bad?” In all this Job did not sin with his lips.

Next (and this is where that South Park clip and most religious lessons about Job bail out), three of Job’s friends arrive to give him comfort, as was the custom in the ancient world. The writing style changes and the rest of the long book consists of flowery statements and increasingly flowery rebuttals. This is the part we are tempted to skip over, but which is surely the real meat and potatoes of the book. Job kicks things off with this cheery little plea:

[3:11] “Why did I not die at birth,
come out from the womb and expire?
[12] Why did the knees receive me?
Or why the breasts, that I should nurse?
[13] For then I would have lain down and been quiet;
I would have slept; then I would have been at rest,
[14] with kings and counselors of the earth
who rebuilt ruins for themselves,
[15] or with princes who had gold,
who filled their houses with silver.
[16] Or why was I not as a hidden stillborn child,
as infants who never see the light?
[17] There the wicked cease from troubling,
and there the weary are at rest.
[18] There the prisoners are at ease together;
they hear not the voice of the taskmaster.
[19] The small and the great are there,
and the slave is free from his master.

From here the debate begins, and I will do my best to summarize each of the friends’ statements and Job’s responses with brief quotes. The first to lecture Job is Eliphaz the Temanite, who says (in chapters 4 and 5):

Remember: who that was innocent has ever perished? [4:7]
As for me, I would seek God! [5:8]

This is basically an appeal to old-school Israelite wisdom. The good prosper, and the wicked perish. If you’re innocent, you have nothing to worry about! If you’re suffering, it must be because of some wickedness in your life. Job isn’t exactly moved. From chapters 6 and 7:

The arrows of the Almighty are in me; my spirit drinks their poison. [6:4]
He who withholds kindness from a friend forsakes the fear of the Almighty. [6:14]
I loathe my life. I would not live forever. [7:16]

Job rejects the implicit premise of Elihaz’ statement, that Job must be personally responsible for his suffering per the machinations of wisdom. His implied premise is that he is suffering innocently. Next up, in chapter 8, is Bildad, who has this to say:

If you are pure and upright, surely he will rouse himself for you. [8:6]
God will not reject a blameless man. [8:20]

Bildad’s gist is the same as Eliphaz, but he has a helpful suggestion: try being more righteous! If you’re really really good, God will have no choice but to bless you! Once again, Job’s not buying it, and responds in chapters 9 and 10:

How can a man be in the right before God? [9:2]
He destroys both the blameless and the wicked [9:22]
Are not my days few? Then cease, and leave me alone! [10:20]

Job is basically taking a page out of Qoheleth, and reaching the same conclusion as that book: The so-called righteous AND the wicked are both destined for the grave, so show me the actual advantage of being righteous! Zophar is up next, in chapter 11:

Know then that God exacts of you less than your guilt deserves. [11:6]
If iniquity is in your hand, put it far away. [11:14]

Zophar sounds like a modern day Protestant Christian. He says, “you think your suffering is bad? It’s not half as bad as what you deserve because your heart is so black and sinful. Repent and get right with God!” Job fires back:

I am not inferior to you! [12:3]
The hand of the LORD has done this! [12:9]
You whitewash with lies; worthless physicians, all of you! [13:4]
If a man dies, shall he live again? [14:14]

“How dare you!,” says Job. “You’re supposed to be comforting me, not sitting in judgment!” Job reiterates that he is innocent, that God did this to him, and muses that life is short and pointless. Now that everyone’s had a turn to speak, we’ll speed up the rest of our summary with one-line exchanges:

ELIPHAZ: You are neglecting the fear of God. [15:4] Your own mouth condemns you! [15:6]

JOB: Miserable comforters, all of you! [16:2] [God] has torn me in his wrath and hated me. [16:9] Where then is my hope? [17:15]

BILDAD: Why are we stupid in your sight? [18:3] The light of the wicked will be put out. [18:5]

JOB: How long will you torment me? [19:2] I call for help but there is no justice. [19:7] I know that my Redeemer lives! [19:25]

ZOPHAR: The joy of the godless is but for a moment. [20:5] This is the wicked man’s portion from God. [20:29]

JOB: Why do the wicked live… and grow mighty in power? [21:7]

ELIPHAZ: Can a man be profitable to God? [22:2] Is not your evil abundant? [22:5] Agree with God and be at peace! [22:21]

JOB: My complaint is bitter. [23:2] I go forward but he is not there! [23:9]

BILDAD: Dominion and fear are God’s. [25:2] How can he who is born of woman be pure? [25:4]

JOB: I hold fast to my righteousness and will not let it go. [27:6] But where shall wisdom be found? [28:12] It is hidden from all the living. [28:21] I am a brother to jackals. [30:22] If I have walked with falsehood… let me be weighed in a just balance. [31:5] Oh that I had one to hear me! [31:35]

The words of Job are ended. [31:40]

Thus ends Job’s debate with his friends, and ultimately Job sticks to his guns: he is righteous, innocent but made to suffer, and it is up to God to recognize and reward his righteousness. Before the shocking events that conclude the book can commence, another dude named Elihu shows up to berate Job and the three friends. He is mad at Job because “he justified himself and not God,” and he is mad at the friends because “they had found no answer.” He goes on for six whole chapters saying things like:

I will declare my opinion…[32:17] You say “I am pure” [33:9] In this you are not right… God is greater than man! [33:12] Far be it from God that he should do wickedness. [34:10] The Almighty will not pervert justice. [34:12] Job speaks without knowledge. [34:35] He adds rebellion to his sin! [34:37]

If you are righteous, what did you give to [God]? [35:7] Surely God does not hear an empty cry. [35:13] Behold, God is mighty and does not despise anyone. [36:5] But you are full of judgment on the wicked! [36:17]

Elihu takes everyone to task, not least Job for the arrogance of judging himself righteous and others wicked. He makes a solid point, and yet at this point he just seems like a loudmouth, wagging his finger and drawing out an already interminable debate. If only there was someone more authoritative who could chime in, someone relevant to the discussion who could provide some insight… Oh, right – how about God himself? Chapter 38:

[38:1] Then the LORD answered Job out of the whirlwind and said:
[2] “Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge?
[3] Dress for action like a man;
I will question you, and you make it known to me.
[4] “Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?
Tell me, if you have understanding.
[5] Who determined its measurements—surely you know!
Or who stretched the line upon it?
[6] On what were its bases sunk,
or who laid its cornerstone,
[7] when the morning stars sang together
and all the sons of God shouted for joy?
…
[16] Have you entered into the springs of the sea,
or walked in the recesses of the deep?
[17] Have the gates of death been revealed to you,
or have you seen the gates of deep darkness?
[18] Have you comprehended the expanse of the earth?
Declare, if you know all this.”

God’s perspective is, “Did you ever create a walrus? No? Then why do you even bother sitting around and debating my ways?!” Job’s response is a solid little nugget of wisdom:

[40:3] Then Job answered the LORD and said:
[4] “Behold, I am of small account; what shall I answer you?
I put my hand over my mouth.
[5] I have spoken once, and I will not answer;
twice, but I will proceed no further.”

God issues a final challenge to Job:

I will question you. [40:7] Will you condemn me that you might be in the right? [40:8] Can you draw out Leviathan with a fish hook? [41:1] Who has first given to me that I should repay him? [41:11]

And Job falls down in repentance:

You can do all things and no purpose of yours can be thwarted! [42:2] I have uttered what I did not understand! [42:3] Now my eye sees you and I repent in dust and ashes. [42:5-6]

In the end, only God comes out on top. Job’s friends were wrong for judging him and utterly failing to comfort him, and Job was wrong to insist that he was righteous and innocent. The implications of the whole thing are actually kind of staggering, but first we need to wrap up the narrative. The book of Job ends with two small narrative bits: 1) God rebukes Job’s friends and tells them to go make atonement sacrifices for having been such numbskulls, and 2) God “restored the fortunes of Job,” giving him new crops, new herds, new servants, and great wealth. “Twice what he had before.” Job even gets new offspring, ten children to replace those lost. THE END.

If we insist on reading Job as a simple, literal, narrative story, then the brief happy ending here is the climax and it’s up to you what lesson, if any, you take away from it. But if we recognize the unique style and format, and the fact that – as with most Hebrew writing – it’s not the ending but what comes in the middle that matters most, then we begin to appreciate what Job really is and what it’s really saying.

Theodicy is all about putting God on trial to see whether or not he meets the standard, whether or not he is just. Job sets out to conduct such a trial, with human suffering as the damning exhibit A. In the end, however, the book turns the tables, and wisdom, religion, and theodicy itself are in the dock. Job questions the old easy answers about righteous and wicked, good and bad, innocent and guilty, and then questions its own questions. In the end, God chastises everyone involved for bringing it all up in the first place! That’s why I say this isn’t exactly a theodicy, as the question of God’s justness is never answered.

As a piece of wisdom literature, Job is more innovative even than Qoheleth. Qoheleth looked at Proverbs and called its easy answers and platitudes into question. Job goes a step further and calls the questioning into question. This is one of the amazing things about the bible that is sadly overlooked: that it almost constantly re-examines and scrutinizes itself, asking the big questions over and over and coming up with new answers (or at least poking holes in the old ones). So many people have read Job as a one-dimensional promise that good people will be rewarded that the real message – a prickly and challenging one – is lost.

In the coming weeks we’ll look at the literature that came out of Israel’s experience in exile in Babylon and Persia. The exile forced a violent re-evaluation of everything Israelite, and the literature that was born out of that period is extraordinary. I hope you’ll continue to join me.

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Tags: job, south park, suffering, theodicy, wisdom

December 2, 2012 0

Episode 17 – Wisdom Part 1: King Solomon’s Mind (Proverbs & Qoheleth)

By JoshWay in Blog, Podcast

[TRANSCRIPT:]

Hey, kids! Put on your thinkin’ beanie and stroke your long grey beard, it’s ancient wisdom day here on BOOK!

[INTRO MUSIC]

Hello, and welcome to BOOK, a bible podcast for everybody. I’m Josh Way. We’re taking a break from the historical narrative of the bible to look at some of the specialized genres in the Hebrew literary canon. Last time we looked at the psalms, and we now turn our puzzled gaze unto the wisdom literature. This week we’ll look at the writings associated with Israel’s King Solomon, and next time we’ll talk about Job, one of the juiciest and most-oft-mangled books in the bible. Join us, won’t me?

The wisdom tradition of Israel, like most of its national attributes, was similar to and yet distinct from wisdom traditions throughout the ancient world. And within Israel’s unique expression of wisdom, we observe an intriguing evolution. As Israel’s religion, geography, and sociology stretched and changed through prosperity, war, famine, and exile, so too the literature changed and “grew up.” Our brief look at the Solomon writings will testify to this. Our first job is to define wisdom in the ancient sense, then examine the specific Israelite notion more closely, and, of course, look at the literature.

Today “wisdom” denotes a quality or state of mind. Wisdom isn’t something you can pin down or catalog, it’s something one possesses or does not possess. It’s discernment, the ability to instinctively make sound judgments. While this definition is most certainly related to the ancient one, there’s another dimension to ancient wisdom we have to acknowledge. Wisdom, in the near eastern world of the bible, was a special and practical KNOWLEDGE – a KNOWLEDGE of how the universe works. We’ll see how this plays out in the literature in a moment, but by way of introduction this is the key: the ancient “wise one” was (believed to be) gifted with special knowledge that he or she would then teach to others, usually children.

In Israel, there were three major “offices” which defined leadership: priest, king, and prophet. Priests managed Israel’s relationship with her God, kings were supposed to unite and inspire Israel, and prophets spoke urgent words of truth at times of crisis. A fourth office, sometimes called “sage,” represents the influence of wisdom. But the relationships between these offices are a bit convoluted. It’s something like this: A priest can be a prophet (like Samuel), but a prophet wouldn’t be king. Kings get into trouble for acting as priests (like Saul), but any of these could be a sage. There were professional teachers and sages, and then there were those in other positions who were gifted with wisdom. The most famous of these is the presumed author of today’s material, King Solomon.

The first scroll of Kings says this about Solomon in chapter 4 verse 29:

[29] And God gave Solomon wisdom and understanding beyond measure, with understanding as vast as the sands on the seashore. [30] Solomon’s wisdom surpassed the wisdom of all the Kedomites and all the wisdom of the Egyptians. [31] He was the wisest of all men, wiser than Ethan the Ezrahite, and Heman, Calcol, and Darda, the sons of Mahol, and his fame was in all the surrounding nations. [32] He composed 3,000 proverbs, and his songs numbered 1,005.

The bible scroll called simply “Proverbs” is a collection of some portion of Solomon’s 3,000 proverbs, though it appears to have been compiled much later during the reforms of King Hezekiah, and it contains collected sayings from other sages as well. Scholarship always calls biblical authorship into question for one reason or another, but in this case it is reasonable to think that Solomon (or perhaps a school or fanclub he established) is responsible for these writings, which make up the bulk of the scroll. The first few verses present the proverbs and state their purpose:

1 The proverbs of Solomon son of David, king of Israel:
2 For learning wisdom and discipline; For understanding words of insight;
3 For acquiring the discipline for success, Righteousness, justice, and equity;
4 For endowing the simple with shrewdness, The young with knowledge and foresight.
5 The wise man, hearing them, will gain more wisdom; The discerning man will learn to be adroit;
6 For understanding proverb and epigram, The words of the wise and their riddles.
7 The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge; Fools despise wisdom and discipline.

The purpose of wisdom is made explicit at the start: “for acquiring the discipline for success.” The proposal is straightforward: this material is the truth, and if you align yourself with the truth you will be successful. The proverbs aren’t meant to inspire or encourage better behavior, they are meant to tell you how to live. And while the wisdom tradition overall is more general and universal than, say, the law or the psalms, we can see from verse 7 that the context here is still covenant Israel. “Fear YHWH” isn’t a generic call to believe in God, it’s a specific instruction to keep the law of the covenant.

And here is the key which unlocks the Proverbs. Whereas today our tendency would be to read these saying as suggestions or ideals, they were intended as axioms, as immutable truths from God’s own mind. This becomes clear in the text itself, in chapter 3:

[3:19] The LORD by wisdom founded the earth;
by understanding he established the heavens;
[20] by his knowledge the deeps broke open,
and the clouds drop down the dew.
[21] My son, do not lose sight of these—
keep sound wisdom and discretion,
[22] and they will be life for your soul
and adornment for your neck.
[23] Then you will walk on your way securely,
and your foot will not stumble.

The wisdom of the proverbs, says the author of Proverbs, is YHWH’s own wisdom, the wisdom he used to shape and order the universe. Therefore, if you listen to this wisdom, and live accordingly, you are guaranteed success – “they will be your life and your soul.” They aren’t just good ideas, they’re the capital-tee Truth. To the early Israelite sage, the wisdom sayings are like gravity or photosynthesis – they are natural laws, descriptions of how the world works. That’s how we have to read this material. Whether or not it pans out that way in “real life” is another issue we’ll explore as we proceed.

The first section of proverbs consists of several poems about the nature and importance of wisdom before the actual proverbs begin in (what we call) chapter ten. Most of the poems are framed as appeals from a father to a son, and a recurring image is that of a woman, or rather two women, embodiments of wisdom and folly. This is from chapter 8:

[8:1] Does not Lady Wisdom call?
Does not understanding raise her voice?
[2] On the heights beside the way,
at the crossroads she takes her stand;
[3] beside the gates in front of the town,
at the entrance of the portals she cries aloud:
[4] “To you, O men, I call,
and my cry is to the children of man.
[5] O simple ones, learn prudence;
O fools, learn sense.
[6] Hear, for I will speak noble things,
and from my lips will come what is right,
[7] for my mouth will utter truth;
wickedness is an abomination to my lips.
[8] All the words of my mouth are righteous;
there is nothing twisted or crooked in them.
[9] They are all straight to him who understands,
and right to those who find knowledge.
[10] Take my instruction instead of silver,
and knowledge rather than choice gold,
[11] for wisdom is better than jewels,
and all that you may desire cannot compare with her.”

…and this is from chapter 9:

[13] The Woman Folly is loud;
she is seductive and knows nothing.
[14] She sits at the door of her house;
she takes a seat on the highest places of the town,
[15] calling to those who pass by,
who are going straight on their way,
[16] “Whoever is simple, let him turn in here!”
And to him who lacks sense she says,
[17] “Stolen water is sweet,
and bread eaten in secret is pleasant.”
[18] But he does not know that the dead are there,
that her guests are in the depths of the grave.

This kind of didactic, either/or instruction is the bread and butter of wisdom teaching, and it becomes downright formulaic in the proverbs themselves. Solomon’s proverbs take the form of simple couplets, presenting an A/B idea that sums up a “wisdom law.” Here are several examples. (See the accompanying blog post for the bible references.)

[10:1] A wise son makes a glad father,
but a foolish son is a sorrow to his mother.
[2] Treasures gained by wickedness do not profit,
but righteousness delivers from death.
[3] The LORD does not let the righteous go hungry,
but he thwarts the craving of the wicked.
[4] A slack hand causes poverty,
but the hand of the diligent makes rich.

[14] The wise lay up knowledge,
but the mouth of a fool brings ruin near.
[15] A rich man’s wealth is his strong city;
the poverty of the poor is their ruin.
[16] The wage of the righteous leads to life,
the gain of the wicked to sin.

[11:9] With his mouth the godless man would destroy his neighbor,
but by knowledge the righteous are delivered.
[10] When it goes well with the righteous, the city rejoices,
and when the wicked perish there are shouts of gladness.
[11] By the blessing of the upright a city is exalted,
but by the mouth of the wicked it is overthrown.

[12:21] No ill befalls the righteous,
but the wicked are filled with trouble.
[22] Lying lips are an abomination to the LORD,
but those who act faithfully are his delight.

[22:4] The reward for humility and fear of the LORD
is riches and honor and life.
[5] Thorns and snares are in the way of the crooked;
whoever guards his soul will keep far from them.
[6] Train up a child in the way he should go;
even when he is old he will not depart from it.

[11] He who loves purity of heart,
and whose speech is gracious, will have the king as his friend.
[12] The eyes of the LORD keep watch over knowledge,
but he overthrows the words of the traitor.
[13] The sluggard says, “There is a lion outside!
I shall be killed in the streets!”

That last one about the sluggard is unique and kind of hilarious. Instead of two contrasting ideas, it’s just a singular joke making fun of a man who refuses to get a job because, “hey, there might be a lion outside!” Read properly, the bible can be quite funny. We’ve picked out a few funny bits along the way, but before too long we’ll look at an entire book that I believe is intended as a dark comedy. You probably won’t be able to guess which one…

If Solomon’s proverbs were meant to be suggestions, little nudges in the right direction, they wouldn’t be controversial at all. The righteous ought to prosper, and the vain and foolish ought to suffer the consequences of their folly. But that’s not what Proverbs says. It says “the righteous WILL and MUST prosper, because that’s how the universe has been structured. The wicked WILL and MUST fail, because that’s how the world works. In so-called “real life,” that’s a bit more difficult to swallow. Those who live humble and righteous lives often suffer, and those who lie and cheat and oppress often prosper. The Proverbs seem from this perspective to be at best naive, and at worst demonstrably untrue.

Now, a common religious answer to that objection is that the bible is talking about eternity, where righteousness and wickedness are fully repaid and justice done. But the paradigm of Proverbs is life in Israel, not the afterlife. And, before we dismiss or shoot down the objection, we ought to acknowledge the fact that the bible itself gives voice to the very same protest. And so, we move on to Qoheleth.

Called “Ecclesiastes” in English (by way of Greek), Qoheleth is the name of the book’s author, or more likely his or her title, probably “Teacher.” The scroll’s inscription reads:

[1:1] The words of Qoheleth, son of David, king in Jerusalem.

This has led to the traditional belief that Solomon himself was the Qoheleth in question. And, though “son of David” is a vague designation indicating any king from the tribe of Judah, it’s hard to think of another king whose wisdom and life experience would qualify him to write such a text. Whether it was written by Solomon himself or by some other royal Israelite, the book reflects a very different view on wisdom. Put these excerpts from just the first chapter in your philosophical pipe and smoke them:

[2] Utter futility, says Qoheleth,
Utter futility! All is futile!
[3] What real value is there for a man in that
at which he toils under the sun?
…
[9] What has been is what will be,
and what has been done is what will be done,
and there is nothing new under the sun.
[10] Is there a thing of which it is said,
“See, this is new”?
It has been already
in the ages before us.
[11] There is no remembrance of former things,
nor will there be any remembrance
of later things yet to be
among those who come after.

[12] I Qoheleth have been king over Israel in Jerusalem. [13] And I applied my heart to seek and to search out by wisdom all that is done under heaven. It is an unhappy business that God has given to the children of man to be busy with. [14] I have seen everything that is done under the sun, and behold, all is futility and a chasing after wind.
[15] What is crooked cannot be made straight,
and what is lacking cannot be counted.
[16] I said in my heart, “I have acquired great wisdom, surpassing all who were over Jerusalem before me, and my heart has had great experience of wisdom and knowledge.” [17] And I applied my heart to know wisdom and to know madness and folly. I perceived that this also is but a chasing after wind.
[18] For in much wisdom is much frustration,
and he who increases knowledge increases sorrow.

What we have in Qoheleth – basically in its own words – is a world-weary sort of anti-wisdom, a refutation of the cut-and-dry axioms of the proverbs. Qoheleth says, “I tried that, I pursued wisdom, and – like everything else in real life – it turned out to be a sham.” The book decries many vain pursuits such as wealth, hard work, and love, but the most surprising critique is the one reserved for wisdom itself. This is from chapter 2:

[12] So I turned to consider wisdom and madness and folly. For what can the man do who comes after the king? Only what has already been done. [13] Then I saw that there is more gain in wisdom than in folly, as there is more gain in light than in darkness. [14] The wise person has his eyes in his head, but the fool walks in darkness. And yet I perceived that the same fate awaits them both. [15] Then I said in my heart, “What happens to the fool will also happen to me. To what advantage, then, have I been so very wise?” And I said in my heart that this also is futility. [16] For of the wise as of the fool there is no enduring remembrance, seeing that in the days to come all will have been long forgotten. How the wise dies just like the fool! [17] So I hated life, because what is done under the sun was grievous to me, for all is futility and a chasing after wind.

Qoheleth looks back on a life of great wisdom and success, and concludes that wisdom itself is a kind of folly. At this point, we wish we knew a little more about the Qoheleth. Is this an older, wiser Solomon, world-weary and ashamed after his descent into apostasy and moral failure? Or is this a later king of Israel, reflecting on the sad state of the nation and the covenant? Whatever the case, the scroll is a refreshing dose of humanity and candor after the inspiring but often frustrating proverbs. One of the most famous passages from Qoheleth is this bit about seasons and the balance of life experience from chapter 3:

[3:1] For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven:
[2] a time to be born, and a time to die;
a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted;
[3] a time to kill, and a time to heal;
a time to break down, and a time to build up;
[4] a time to weep, and a time to laugh;
a time to mourn, and a time to dance;
[5] a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together;
a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;
[6] a time to seek, and a time to lose;
a time to keep, and a time to cast away;
[7] a time to tear, and a time to sew;
a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
[8] a time to love, and a time to hate;
a time for war, and a time for peace.

Not unlike Proverbs, this is an appeal to the design of creation. It says, there is a system that works and we can participate in it. But unlike Proverbs, it does not insist that the good things are part of the design, and the bad things must be your fault. Both good AND bad are part of the design, says Qoheleth. It’s simultaneously kind of depressing and comforting. The honest humanity of it all is refreshing, anyway.

Qoheleth isn’t all gloom and doom. The author does prescribe a way of living, and in fact it’s a very orthodox Israelite way of living and keeping the covenant. But the presentation of wisdom in Qoheleth has a much different tone, a much more realistic and less idealistic tenor. This is the scroll’s conclusion:

[12:8] Utter futility, says Qoheleth; Utter futility!
[9] Because Qoheleth was a sage, he continued to instruct the people, weighing and studying and arranging many maxims with great care. [10] Qoheleth sought to find words of delight, and uprightly he wrote words of truth.
[11] The words of the wise are like goads, and like nails firmly fixed are the collected sayings; they are given by one Shepherd. [12] My son, against these be warned! Of making many books there is no end, and much study is a weariness of the flesh.
[13] The end of the matter; all has been heard. Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. [14] For God will bring every deed into judgment, with every secret thing, whether good or bad.

Qoheleth didn’t abandon wisdom, nor did he even abandon the use of proverbs. But his closing message is this: don’t choke on wisdom! Don’t let the burden of wisdom ruin your enjoyment of life. “Fear YHWH and keep the covenant,” that part of the message never changed. But a man who lived his life by the letter of wisdom is back to report that it can be just as stifling and deadly as vanity and folly. Let God make the judgments of right and wrong, just do your part to live your life and make your contribution. These words from chapter 9 put it succinctly:

[9:7] Go, eat your bread with joy, and drink your wine with a merry heart, for God approved of your behavior long ago.
[8] Let your clothes always be clean, and your head never lacking ointment.
[9] Enjoy life with the wife whom you love, all the fleeting days of your life that have been granted to you under the sun, for that alone is what you can get out of life and out of the means you acquire under the sun. [10] Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might, for there is no work or thought or knowledge or wisdom in the grave, to which you are going.

That’s from THE BIBLE!

Proverbs and Qoheleth: another biblical conversation that thwarts our expectations and challenges our view of the entire canon. Once again I stress the humanity that underlies these texts, and I urge you – whatever your affiliation or your interest in the bible – to do your best to allow the very real witness of these ancient words another hearing. It might be easier if the bible were the single-minded instruction book so many on all sides imagine it to be, but it wouldn’t be nearly as wonderful and relatable as it really is.

Next time we’ll see where the book of Job took the wisdom tradition. I hope it will be as surprising and challenging for you as it has been for me and many others.

This has been BOOK, a bible podcast for everybody, and I have been Josh Way. If you enjoyed this podcast, I encourage you to share, like, tweet, blog, tumbl, stumble, and chumble it to your online friends and family. If you have any comments, questions or constructive feedback, email me at book@joshway.com. You can also leave a voicemail at 801-760-3013, and maybe I’ll answer it on the podcast. Read the BOOK blog and find more content at BOOK.JOSHWAY.COM. That’s it for me, Bible pals. I’ll catch you next time.

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Tags: bible, mashal, proverbs, qohelet, solomon, wisdom

November 26, 2012 0

Episode 16 – Psalms

By JoshWay in Blog, Podcast

[TRANSCRIPT]

In my left hand, I’m playing Angry Birds Star Wars… Hold on. Just a… hold on. Just a minute… Oh, man… Stupid Stormtrooper pigs! When will the galaxy be rid of you?!

Oh, sorry. I guess you’re here about the BOOK.

[INTRO MUSIC]

Hello, and welcome to BOOK, a bible podcast for everybody. I’m Josh Way. This week, for the first time on BOOK, we’re going to veer off course a bit and interrupt the historical timeline of the bible to look at a very different sort of literature: the Psalms. “Psalm” comes from an ancient Greek word meaning “the pluck of a harp,” but the word has come to refer to sacred songs and poems. The biblical Psalms are a diverse and fascinating collection which represent a surprising variety of perspectives, occasions, and very human emotions.

These Hebrew verses are arranged in five “books,” five collections of songs with no apparent thematic or organizational structure. There may well be such a structure, but it’s not obvious to us. The five parts may be an intentional echo of the fivefold Torah, suggesting that the Psalms are perhaps a counterpoint to the covenant law, the human response to the divine instruction. Whatever the case, the key to appreciating the Psalms is to allow the real – often broken – human voices in them to speak loud and clear. The range and intensity of emotion in these poems is stunning. There are psalms of exuberant gratitude, of deep despair, of bitter dejection and vengeful resolve. Modern readers tend to enjoy and relate to the happy and sad psalms, but the angry ones remain an issue. Christian thinker and ancient poetry guru C.S. Lewis felt he had no choice but to reject some of the psalms, calling them “hateful.” We’ll revisit that controversy later in the show.

On one level, the Psalms are just ancient hymns, the songbook of national Israel with a song for just about any occasion. But that’s the function of the literature. The origins, context and composition of the literature – as far as we can discover them – are the real attraction here. We obviously don’t have time to read and examine all 150 psalms in a short podcast. But I’d like to take a good look at a few of my favorites, which I think represent the whole body of psalms quite well. Here we go.

Psalm 1 & Psalm 2

The first two psalms are very short and represent two of the major thematic strands running through most psalms. One is about the joy of keeping the covenant law, and the other is about the king. Here’s Psalm 1:

1 Happy is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked, does not stand in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers;
2 but his delight is in the law of the LORD, and on his law he meditates day and night.
3 He is like a tree planted beside streams of water which yields its fruit in season, whose leaf does not wither, and all that it produces thrives.
4 Not so the wicked, they are like chaff that the wind blows away.
5 Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous;
6 for the LORD knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish.

Before we comment on the content of this poem, a word about its language. Of course, we miss out on a lot because we don’t read these poems in Hebrew. Translate any poetry out of its original language, and you’re going to lose some – perhaps MOST – of its impact. To make it worse, there’s no shortage of options when it comes to translation. There are countless Christian and Jewish translations of the Psalms, and the tone and meaning can vary according to the interpretation. The versions I’m reading here are an amalgamation of the English Standard Version and the Jewish Publication Society translations, with a little of my own tinkering.

Just to give you an idea of what we’re missing not reading the Hebrew, here’s the first line of Psalm 1 in the masoretic Hebrew text:

[TRANSLITERATION:] ashree ha-ish asher lo halakh ba-etzat reshaim

“Happy is the man who who does not walk in the way of the wicked.” ashree ha-ish asher… The consonance in that short phrase is very typical of Hebrew poetry, and there’s almost no way to carry that over into a faithful translation. We’ll look at a few more common Hebrew poetic devices as we move along. One more note about language: We’ve observed this before, but it’s worth mentioning again that references to “the LORD” in Bible translations are not generic titles but substitutions for the personal name of Israel’s God – “Yahweh” according to scholarship, though that’s probably not entirely accurate. It’s helpful to our understanding of these songs to remember that they are not generically religious, as they are often assumed to be today. They are specific to Israel, and its covenant with its God.

Psalm 1 is a simple verse about a choice facing every Israelite: keep the covenant law and prosper, or forsake it and suffer the consequences. The didactic nature of the psalm puts it in line with the wisdom literature of Israel, and psalms like this one are often called “wisdom psalms.” We’ll talk a lot more about Semitic wisdom literature next week. This psalm’s simple message is illustrated with appropriately simple imagery having to do with motion and agriculture. The happy person doesn’t walk, stand, or sit with the wicked, because they have nothing to tether them to the ground, and the wind blows them away like chaff (the leftover debris after grain is processed). Instead, the lawkeeper is planted in the ground like a tree. He isn’t tossed about the breeze, and his deep covenant roots mean that he can produce fruit and prosper. The simplistic ideals of this kind of teaching didn’t always match up with real-life experience, but that’s something we’ll tackle head-on in our wisdom podcast.

Psalm 2 is similarly single-minded, but on a different topic altogether. Here’s the text:

1 Why do nations assemble, and peoples plot in vain?
2 The kings of the earth take their stand, and rulers scheme together against the LORD and against His anointed, saying,
3 “Let us break the bonds of their yoke and shake off their ropes from us!”
4 He who is enthroned in heaven laughs; the Lord mocks them.
5 Then He speaks to them in anger, terrifying them in His rage,
6 “I have installed My king on Zion, My holy mountain!”
7 Let me tell of the decree: the LORD said to me, “You are My son, I have fathered you this day.
8 Ask it of Me, and I will make the nations your domain; your estate, the limits of the earth.
9 You can smash them with an iron rod, and shatter them like potter’s vessel.”
10 So now, O kings, be prudent; accept discipline, you rulers of the earth!
11 Serve the LORD in awe; rejoice with trembling,
12 kiss the son, lest He be angered, and your way be doomed in the mere flash of His anger. Happy are all who take refuge in Him.

This is a royal psalm, and boy-howdy is it ever ROYAL. This short song is a theological celebration of the monarchy. The king of Israel is seen as the personally chosen (“anointed”) representative of God on earth, and the nations of the world plot and scheme against him in jealousy and rebellion. This is most likely a product of the Davidic dynasty and the nationalistic program to get all Israelites on board with the monarchy. Israel’s king did not (or was not supposed to) wield his own power, but the power of Israel’s God who, since creation, had entrusted his people with dominion over the earth and everything in it.

In fact, scholarship suggests that this might be a coronation liturgy, performed at the installation of a new king. If you notice, the perspective changes throughout the poem. First, an officiator – probably the high priest – describes the king, “his anointed” in contrast to his many enemies. Then, in verse 7, the new king speaks in the first person: “Let me tell of the decree… YHWH said to me, ‘you are my son.’” Then the officiator – or perhaps the assembly of the people – speaks: “Kiss the son” (that is, pay homage to the new king) “lest he” (that is, God) “be angered.” We may be listening in on an exclusive ancient ceremony. This is the first of many royal psalms.

Psalm 14

Psalm 14 is one of the scores of psalms attributed to King David, who is indeed described in the bible as something of a singer/songwriter. It’s important to acknowledge, however, that the inscription on these Psalms – “ledavid” in Hebrew – could mean a variety of things. It could mean “of David,” as in, “written by David.” But it could mean “for David,” or “in the style of David,” or “dedicated to David.” Still, it’s completely possible that he wrote them, and perhaps likely given the close connection many of them have to events from his life. Here’s Psalm 14:

[1] The fool says in his heart, “There is no God.”
They are corrupt, they do abominable deeds,
no one does good.
[2] The LORD looks down from heaven on the children of man,
to see if there are any who understand,
who seek after God.
[3] They have all turned aside; together they have become corrupt;
there is none who does good,
not even one.
[4] Are they so witless, all the evildoers
who devour my people as they eat bread
and do not call upon the LORD?
[5] They will be seized with fright,
for God is with the generation of the righteous.
[6] You would shame the plans of the poor,
but the LORD is their refuge.
[7] Oh, that salvation for Israel would come out of Zion!
When the LORD restores the fortunes of his people,
let Jacob rejoice, let Israel be glad.

The refrain of this Psalm – “The fool says in his heart, ‘there is no god’” – is popular with modern Christians looking for a word from the bible about atheists. However, it’s more than a little anachronistic to read Psalm 14 in that key. First of all, we’re talking about an ancient world that didn’t have any atheists. Everyone believed in a god more more likely a host of gods, and intellectual atheism wasn’t a popular option. Second, the term David uses here for “fool,” the Hebrew nabal, was used as a designation for other Israelites. David’s talking about people inside the covenant community who “say in their hearts” that there is no God. That is, people who think and act and live as if God wasn’t there. Once again, a bible verse popular with those pointing a finger at others turns out to be a stinging indictment of religious bozos.

There’s a short episode in Samuel (which we skimmed over in our podcast on the subject) where David encounters a man who is actually called Nabal. In the story, David is on the run from Saul and must rely on the kindness of the Israelites he encounters to survive and evade the soldiers who hunt him. Nabal is a wealthy sheepkeeper who refuses to assist David and is more than a little rude to him. David and Nabal nearly go to battle before Nabal’s sweet and wise wife Abigail defuses the quarrel (also Nabal dies and David marries Abigail). You can read the account in 1 Samuel 25. We imagine this might be the backdrop to Psalm 14, with David blowing off steam writing poetry in his journal.

Psalm 45

Here’s the text of Psalm 45:

For the leader; on shoshannim. Of the Korahites. A maskil. A love song.
2 My heart is astir with gracious words; I speak my poem to a king; my tongue is the pen of an expert scribe.
3 You are fairer than all men; your speech is endowed with grace; rightly has God given you an eternal blessing.
4 Gird your sword upon your thigh, O hero, in your splendor and glory;
5 in your glory, win success; ride on in the cause of truth and meekness and right; and let your right hand lead you to awesome deeds.
6 Your arrows, sharpened, pierce the breast of the king’s enemies; peoples fall at your feet.
7 Your divine throne is everlasting; your royal scepter is a scepter of equity.
8 You love righteousness and hate wickedness; rightly has God, your God, chosen to anoint you with oil of gladness over all your peers.
9 All your robes are fragrant with myrrh and aloes and cassia; from ivoried palaces lutes entertain you.
10 Royal princesses are your favorites; the consort stands at your right hand, decked in gold of Ophir.
11 Take heed, lass, and note, incline your ear: forget your people and your father’s house,
12 and let the king be aroused by your beauty; since he is your lord, bow to him.
13 O Tyrian lass, the wealthiest people will court your favor with gifts,
14 goods of all sorts. The royal princess, her dress embroidered with golden mountings,
15 is led inside to the king; maidens in her train, her companions, are presented to you.
16 They are led in with joy and gladness; they enter the palace of the king.
17 Your sons will succeed your ancestors; you will appoint them princes throughout the land.
18 I commemorate your fame for all generations, so peoples will praise you forever and ever.

This lovely and somewhat sensual song is a song “of the Korahites,” a line of composers and poets associated with the family of Korah, the priests who rebelled against Moses and Aaron in the scroll of Numbers. What’s mildly interesting about this particular psalm is that it appears to be a royal wedding song. What’s exponentially more interesting is that scholarship suggests this was the wedding song of the wicked King Ahab and his wickeder wife Jezebel. Not exactly the Davidic ideal.

Psalm 48

Here’s Psalm 48:

A song. A psalm of the Korahites.
2 The LORD is great and much acclaimed in the city of our God, His holy mountain —
3 fair-crested, joy of all the earth, Mount Zion, summit of Zaphon, city of the great king.
4 Through its citadels, God has made Himself known as a haven.
5 See, the kings joined forces; they advanced together.
6 At the mere sight of it they were stunned, they were terrified, they panicked;
7 they were seized there with a trembling, like a woman in the throes of labor,
8 as the Tarshish fleet was wrecked in an easterly gale.
9 The likes of what we heard we have now witnessed in the city of the LORD of hosts, in the city of our God — may God preserve it forever! Selah.
10 In Your temple, God, we meditate upon Your faithful care.
11 The praise of You, God, like Your name, reaches to the ends of the earth; Your right hand is filled with beneficence.
12 Let Mount Zion rejoice! Let the towns of Judah exult, because of Your judgments.
13 Walk around Zion, circle it; count its towers,
14 take note of its ramparts; go through its citadels, that you may recount it to a future age.
15 For God — He is our God forever; He will lead us evermore.

This is another Korahite psalm, and another royal psalm of sorts. Whenever you see “Mount Zion” imagery in a psalm, it’s an appeal to Jerusalem and the royal theology that said God had permanently planted his feet on Israel’s “holy mountain.” What’s remarkable in this particular psalm is the mention of “Zaphon” in verse 3. Zaphon was the “holy mountain” of Canaanite religion, and its appearance in a Hebrew worship song may have some fascinating ramifications. Were the Korahites simply “borrowing” Canaanite songs and replacing the names of Canaanite gods with “YHWH” and “Zaphon” with “Zion?” Well, if so, it’s not nearly as scandalous as it sounds given how history and literature and anthropology work, but it’s an intriguing possibility all the same. We’ll explore foreign influences on Hebrew literature more deeply in our wisdom podcast.

Psalm 110

A psalm of David.
[1] The LORD says to my Lord: “Sit at my right hand while
I make your enemies your footstool.”
[2] The LORD sends forth from Zion your mighty scepter.
Rule over your enemies!
[3] Your people will offer themselves freely on the day of your power,
in holy garments;
from the womb of the morning,
the dew of your youth will be yours.
[4] The LORD has sworn
and will not change his mind,
“You are a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek.”
[5] The Lord is at your right hand;
he crushes kings on the day of his wrath.
[6] He works judgment among the nations, heaping up bodies;
he crushes chiefs over the wide earth.
[7] He drinks from the brook by the way;
therefore he holds his head high.

This royal psalm attributed to David is thematically very similar to Psalm 2, and is significant for a couple of reasons. First off, Psalm 110 is the single most quoted passage of Hebrew Scripture in the Greek New Testament. It is a loadbearing piece of theology for the argument of the New Testament. Additional, and not unrelated, it’s the language in verse 1 and the mention of Melchizedek in verse 4 that make this a rather pregnant little song. If David is meant to have written this, or even if it’s ghost-written from his perspective, what does “YHWH says to my lord…” mean? Who is a “lord” or “boss” between David and YHWH? Furthermore, what is meant by the appeal to the mysterious Melchizedek, the non-Hebrew king/priest who appeared to bless Abram in Genesis 14? David knows full well that Israel’s kings are forbidden from acting as priests, and that such behavior is what lost Saul his throne. This is the foundation for much speculation regarding so-called “messianic” theology, something we’ll discuss more fully in future podcasts.

Psalm 119

A quick mention of Psalm 119, which – if you’re familiar with it – you’ll be glad to know we’re not going to read in its entirety. Psalm 119 is the longest Psalm by far, and the longest single “chapter” in the bible (though chapter breaks are superficial divisions added later). It’s actually a self-contained collection of 22 short psalms, each beginning with a sequential letter of the Hebrew alphabet. Psalm 119 is a celebration of Torah, and the first stanza is representative of the full contents:

Aleph
[1] Blessed are those whose way is blameless,
who walk in the law of the LORD!
[2] Blessed are those who keep his testimonies,
who seek him with their whole heart,
[3] who also do no wrong,
but walk in his ways!
[4] You have commanded your precepts
to be kept diligently.
[5] Oh that my ways may be steadfast
in keeping your statutes!
[6] Then I shall not be put to shame,
having my eyes fixed on all your commandments.
[7] I will praise you with an upright heart,
when I learn your righteous rules.
[8] I will keep your statutes;
do not utterly forsake me!

Psalm 137

We come now to a more difficult type of psalm. You won’t hear this one read in a Sunday morning church service. In fact, the only time Psalm 137 is referenced these days, it’s by people who are criticizing and often condemning the bible for being barbaric and hateful. Even the beloved Christian thinker C.S. Lewis called it a “devilish” text and wished it wasn’t in the bible at all. What’s the big deal? Here’s the text:

1 By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat, sat and wept, as we thought of Zion.
2 There on the poplars we hung up our lyres,
3 for our captors asked us there for songs, our tormentors, for amusement, “Sing us one of the songs of Zion.”
4 How can we sing a song of the LORD on alien soil?
5 If I forget you, O Jerusalem, let my right hand wither;
6 let my tongue stick to my palate if I cease to think of you, if I do not keep Jerusalem in memory even at my happiest hour.
7 Remember, O LORD, against the Edomites the day of Jerusalem’s fall; how they cried, “Strip her, strip her to her very foundations!”
8 Fair Babylon, you predator, a blessing on him who repays you in kind what you have inflicted on us;
9 a blessing on him who seizes your babies and dashes them against the rocks!

It’s easy to see why this psalm is so difficult for many people to deal with. It’s a biblical worship song which calls curses upon an enemy and daydreams about dashing their children against rocks. The problem is almost insurmountable. There is data which brings the text into sharper focus, though it does not eliminate all objection. The first line of the psalm is the most important element for our interpretation: “By the rivers of Babylon we sat.” This is NOT a happy worship psalm from the national period of Israel when the kings reigned from Zion and the covenant was the center of life. This is an EXILE PRAYER. At this moment in Israel’s history, Zion is lost. The covenant is broken. The people are in the strange, unwelcoming land of Babylon, and times could not be more desperate.

We tend to think of religion as divine inspiration or instruction. But historically speaking, religion consists of human expression and reaction to life experience. The experience of exile is unspeakably disruptive and horrible for Israel, and the literature from this period is appropriately brutal. The honest wish from an Israelite’s prayer to “dash their children against the rocks” isn’t any more acceptable because it’s in a religious setting, but it’s perfectly understandable from the point of view of broken, desperate humanity. And this isn’t just a sick, out-of-the-blue prescription of random violence, this a desire for justice, for the crimes of an invading empire to be visited back upon it. We are not called to justify or commend this prayer, only to understand and appreciate the painful place from which it comes. To wish it wasn’t here is to wish for a tamed and bowdlerized bible.

Psalm 139

Here is an excerpt from my personal favorite psalm, number 139, presented without comment:

For the leader. Of David. A psalm.
[1] O LORD, you have searched me and known me!
[2] You know when I sit down and when I rise up;
you discern my thoughts from afar.
[3] You know my walking and my lying down
and are acquainted with all my ways.
[4] Even before a word is on my tongue,
behold, O LORD, you know it altogether.
[5] You hem me in, behind and before,
and lay your hand upon me.
[6] Such knowledge is too wonderful for me;
it is high; I cannot attain it.
[7] Where shall I go from your Spirit?
Or where shall I flee from your presence?
[8] If I ascend to heaven, you are there!
If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there!
[9] If I take the wings of the morning
and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea,
[10] even there your hand shall lead me,
and your right hand shall hold me.
[11] If I say, “Surely the darkness shall cover me,
and the light about me be night,”
[12] even the darkness is not dark to you;
the night is bright as the day,
for darkness is as light with you.

Psalm 23

Lastly, we would regret it if we didn’t look at the most famous of the psalms, number 23, David’s shepherd song. This one is so familiar, but I’d like to offer this translation, which I believe is closer in tone and detail to the Hebrew original, and which hopefully illuminates some familiar ideas with fresh light:

A psalm of David.
1 The LORD is my shepherd; I lack nothing.
2 He makes me lie down in green pastures; He leads me to water and a place to rest;
3 He refreshes my throat; He guides me on the right paths as befits His name.
4 Though I walk through a valley of deep darkness, I fear no harm, for You are with me; Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me.
5 You spread out a table for me in full view of my enemies; You anoint my head with oil; my drink is overflowing.
6 Only goodness and steadfast love will pursue me all the days of my life, and I will return to the house of the LORD for many long years.

Psalm 23 is one of the most accessible and beautiful pieces of ancient poetry we’re fortunate enough to have on record. It’s an exploration of David’s intimate relationship with Israel’s God, expressed in the imagery and feelings he knew best. Verse by verse, we appreciate the exquisite artfulness of Psalm 23.

Verse 1: A simple metaphor: “YHWH is my shepherd.” In David’s experience, this is the ultimate compliment he can pay his God.

Verse 2: Like a shepherd, God leads me to the places where the water and green food are.

Verse 3: The traditional translation reads “he restoreth my soul,” which sounds properly religious. But these are Hebrew words with very simple, practical meanings. The Hebrew word “nephesh” does symbolically mean “soul,” as in “an individual person,” but the word literally means “throat.” There is certainly no Hebrew equivalent of the Platonic “soul,” the disembodied, immortal essence inside a person. David is simply talking about having a drink.

Verse 4: Note first of all the shift in pronouns. The first three verses described God in the third person. The next two verses – the climax of the poem – will address God directly. “You are with me.” And like all shepherds, God must lead his sheep through dangerous valleys where steep cliffs jut and predators lurk. The “rod and staff” are a perfect illustration of the Hebrew concept of judgment. Like the shepherd, God carries two sticks: One for keeping hungry dogs away, and one for gently prodding and leading his sheep.

Verse 5: In the face of real danger, the shepherd God doesn’t just protect his sheep, but he prospers it in the face of its enemies. The blessings are abundant to overflowing.

Verse 6: The traditional translation of verse 6 reads “I will dwell in the house of YHWH forever,” but that translation is deceptively anachronistic. “Dwell in the house of the LORD forever” is usually taken as a reference to going to heaven after death, but no such concept existed in Israel at this time. When you died, you went to the grave and were symbolically collected to the “bosom of Abraham” with the rest of the departed family of Israel. The Hebrew verb here is more likely “shuv,” which means “return” to, not “yashav,” which means “dwell in.” This is a reference to the temple. David says, the Shepherd has been so good to me, I will always return to his house (the tabernacle) as long as I live, like a sheep who knows where he will be taken care of.

Conclusion

There are two unproductive ways people can read the Psalms today. They can sit in judgment of the human weakness, pride, and despair on display in them, or they can ignore or mute that humanity in the name of fervor. The best way to get something out of them – whether your interest in them is religious, academic, or otherwise – is to let them be what they are, and to embrace some of the most candid human expression in the whole bible.

I think of it like this: the Torah was the schematic of what Israel was meant to be, the covenant ideal. The Psalms are the reality, the humanity, the grey areas in which actual people lived. Critics of the bible often cite psalms (like 137) as proof that the bible is toxic and broken. But I personally find the candor, warts, and other flaws on display in these poems to be quite comforting and encouraging.

A little personal note in conclusion: When I was a kid we read and sang a lot of psalms, but it was always the happy ones about God rescuing his people – which meant us, the good guys. That was fine with me, but during the boring parts of church I would flip through the rest of the psalms and read the ones about despair and doubt and revenge, and it made me genuinely happy, as if I’d discovered the secret forbidden section of the bible that said it was OK to be a human being.

As challenging and obtuse as we may find the Torah law to be at such an historical and cultural distance, it’s heartening to see that it was no picnic for the people who lived inside it. And apart from some of more outrageous wisdom texts (which we’ll look at next week), the questions and doubts expressed in the psalms are unique in the whole bible.

This has been BOOK, a bible podcast for everybody. And I have been Josh Way. If you enjoyed this podcast, I urge you to share, blog, like, and tweet it to your online friends and family. If you have any comments, questions or constructive feedback, email me at book@joshway.com. You can also leave a voicemail at 801-760-3013, and maybe I’ll answer it on the podcast. Read the BOOK blog and find more content at BOOK.JOSHWAY.COM. That’s it for me, Bible pals. I’ll catch you next time.

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Tags: bible, david, korahites, poems, poetry, psalms, psalter, songs, zion

November 18, 2012 0

Episode 15 – Kings & Chronicles

By JoshWay in Blog, Podcast

[TRANSCRIPT]

If you came here looking for the Jeff Foxworthy Bible Challenge game show, you are ABSOLUTELY IN THE RIGHT PLACE. We’ll get to the wacky trivia and cash prizes in a moment. In the meantime, welcome to BOOK…

[INTRO MUSIC]

Hello, and this is BOOK, a bible podcast for everybody. I’m Josh Way. This is the show where we look at the actual content of the bible through the lenses of HISTORY and LITERATURE, and then I talk about it and stuff. We move now to the long and sordid history of Israel’s national period, the time of the kings. The primary literature from this period are two scrolls, Kings and Chronicles, which recount the days and deeds of Israel’s rulers. They are each superficially divided into two parts, but they both constitute complete works, and they both cover this same period of history.

Now, this could easily devolve into the most boring podcast ever if we simply listed all the kings of Israel and their accomplishments (or failures, as the case may be). We’re more interested in the historical CONTEXT of these books than the historical CONTENT, and we’re primarily concerned with the literary presentation. Why is this history collected and recounted in this way? Who is collecting and recounting it? What is the argument they are making? We don’t often think about the bible disagreeing with itself, unless we’re accusing it of misinformation or contradiction. But by allowing it to be heard for what it is – a collection of ancient human literary witnesses to history and culture – we find ourselves eavesdropping on some very interesting conversations indeed.

Kings and Chronicles, often regarded as little more than bloated and boring ancient record books, are actually a terrific example of a biblical disagreement. They provide a rare opportunity to look back at a single period of ancient history from two very different viewpoints. This is why we’ll look at Kings and Chronicles together in a compare and contrast type deal. Both scrolls narrate the time from the death of David until the exile – the next major cataclysm in biblical history (much more on that anon). There is a great deal of material that appears in both scrolls, often in the same or similar form. However, it’s the differences and omissions which put the two works at odds. Kings and Chronicles are using the same data to tell two different stories. Both are concerned with the political and religious “performance” of the kings, but they employ different criteria and arrive at different conclusions. And when Assyria and Babylon come along and pull the rug out, they both face some harsh new realities with their own spin.

We’ll take a brief tour of each scroll, then we’ll compare and contrast.

The first half of Kings is primarily concerned with the reign of David’s son Solomon. We could do a whole podcast about Solomon, but in the interest of time and big picture, we’ll give him the old Greatest Hits treatment. The truth is, the portrayal of Solomon in 1 Kings gives us the rubric by which all of Israel’s subsequent kings will be judged. In that vein, here are the major events in the account of Solomon and their significance to the overall literary agenda:

Solomon has to fight his older brother Adonijah for aging David’s throne. The prophet Nathan and Solomon’s mother Bathsheba are instrumental in making sure he gets it.
David dies, and Solomon’s first week as king is a busy one, what with the three murders he orders. He kills three men: his brother Adonijah, and two of his father’s enemies, Joab and Shimei.
Solomon makes a marriage treaty with Egypt’s Pharaoh. This is the last sort of treaty you’d expect an Israelite king to make, given the history between the two nations.
Solomon makes sacrifices to God at a “high place.” That sounds properly religious, but it’s actually a negative thing in a nationalistic text like this. “High places” are threshing floors, like the one we visited in Ruth, which have been set up as local places of worship – over against the official center of worship, the tabernacle in Jerusalem.
These are all surely meant to be red flags, but there are some good things too. Solomon is gifted by God with great wisdom, and he builds God a magnificent Temple in Jerusalem. The Temple, like the tabernacle tent which prefigured it, is adorned with creation imagery and features several concentric “courts” which surround a holy central zone where the ark of the covenant – and thus God himself – dwells.
In chapter 9 Solomon has his own covenant re-establishing encounter with God, who restates the promise and warning he gave to David: keep the covenant law and I will establish your throne forever; forsake it and it’s all over. The rest of the scroll is the sad enactment of this curse.
Solomon amasses an enormous army with tens of thousands of soldiers, horses and chariots. Meanwhile, he employs slave labor to build himself an elaborate palace. Essentially, he turns into a Pharaoh. Which is very un-dude for a king of Israel.
Eventually, Solomon completely abandons the covenant and becomes an international playboy, marrying a thousand foreign wives who introduce him to a thousand foreign gods.
Many enemies foreign and domestic raise against Solomon, per God’s warning to David that an unfaithful son would be “punished by the rod of men.”
Solomon dies and his son Rehoboam takes the throne. However, a challenger named Jeroboam takes control of the northern territory, leading to a split in the kingdom and a new civil war between the North (called Israel) and the South (called Judah).

Solomon’s reign marked a sea change for the nation of Israel. David stumbled, but Solomon fell and so did unified Israel. After Solomon, kings didn’t receive personalized covenant promises from the mouth of God, they faced off with angry prophets who condemned them. The rest of Kings is a list of these kings and the prophets who annoyed them. Reading these chapters is a bit repetitive and depressing, and you have to keep track of two lines of kings: northern Israelites and southern Judahites. I’ve made a PDF chart of all the kings that I’ll attach to the post for this podcast at the website. Here’s an abbreviated run-down:

Down south, Rehoboam gathers his armies to march northward and recover the northern kingdom, but a prophet named Shemaiah tells him not to go.
Meanwhile, in the north, Jeroboam sets up an ersatz temple and several golden calves for his people to worship, a sort of Exodus retro blasphemy fad. An unnamed prophet from Judah confronts Jeroboam with a warning from God to cut the crap. An unnamed prophet from the north makes a desperate attempt to bribe the first prophet into changing his story, and is swiftly killed by a lion.
Still in the north, a prophet named Ahijah tells Jeroboam that his days are numbered, which becomes quite poignant when the king dies.
Meanwhile in the south, Rehoboam builds more “high places,” leading the people deeper into idolatry and sin, and Shishak King of Egypt invades Jerusalem and steals his treasure. Rehoboam dies.
A Judahite named Abijam becomes king of the southern kingdom, but he only gets one paragraph before he dies.
After Abijam comes the rule of Asa, one of the few “good” kings, which – according to the text – means “he walked in the ways of his predecessor David.”
Meanwhile in the north, Jeroboam is succeeded by his son Nadab, who was very naughty indeed but it didn’t matter because he was almost immediately murdered and supplanted by a rival named Baasha.
A prophet named Jehu predicts the fall of Baasha, which then happens. He is succeeded by the similarly short and naughty reigns of Elah, Zimri, and Omri.
Omri’s son Ahab takes the throne, and he is a particularly “wicked” ruler, setting up altars to the Canaanite god Baal and the goddess Asherah.
A prophet named Elijah appears to oppose King Ahab and call him to change his ways or face the consequences. Elijah gets a lot of biblical screentime, in which he brings a widow’s son back from the brink of death and faces off against 450 prophets of Baal. Spoiler: he wins.
Ahab’s wicked and manipulative wife Jezebel declares war on Elijah who must flee for his life. On his journey he has a personal encounter with God, something the kings of Israel and Judah are all denied in this period. God tells him to seek out another prophet named Elisha, who becomes his sidekick.
For a short time Ahab chooses to listen to the prophets instead of his wife, and the northern kingdom is briefly peaceful and prosperous. Eventually, however, Ahab’s treachery catches up with him and he is killed on the battlefield.
Meanwhile, in the south, Asa’s son Jehoshaphat becomes king of Judah. He is an OK ruler, and he makes peace with Israel, but he doesn’t last long.
Up in the north, Ahab’s son Ahaziah rules Israel, and he’s a chip off the old block. A dead chip off the old dead block.
Around this time, Elisha is promoted to Israel’s chief prophet when Elijah is taken up into the sky by some chariots made of fire. A good day for everyone involved.
After Ahaziah’s death, another son of Ahab named Joram assumes the throne of Israel.
At this point Elisha has his own series of adventures, as he performs miraculous signs and wonders in and around the kingdom of Israel.
Meanwhile, in the south, Jehoram the son of Jehoshaphat reigns in Judah, and ends the brief streak of royal righteousness. The text says he “walked in the way of the kings of Israel,” which is about the worst insult this book has to offer. He quickly dies, as does the next king, his son Ahaziah (not to be confused with Israel’s King Ahaziah).
Back up north, Elisha anoints a young man named Jehu, who cleans house in the kingdom of Israel by hunting down all of Ahab’s descendents, executing Jezebel, and wiping out the remaining prophets of Baal, which is fine and good, except that he rebuilds the golden calves and leads Israel astray, et cetera, and he dies.
Meanwhile, in the south, Judah is briefly ruled over by its first and only queen, as Athalia the mother of the recently dead Ahaziah seizes power. She attempts to secure her own claim by wiping out the rest of the royal family, but a son of Ahaziah named Joash manages to survive and becomes king when his grandmother is killed. Awkward Passover that year.
Joash makes some repairs to the Temple but accomplishes little else. He is succeeded by his son Amaziah, who is succeeded by HIS son Jotham.
Back in the north, Jehu’s son Jehoahaz becomes king of Israel, as did HIS son Joash (not to be confused with Judah’s King Joash).
Speak of the devil, back down south, Amaziah the son of Judah’s King Joash becomes King. He’s an OK but forgettable monarch, as is his son Azariah who inherits his throne. He is sometimes referred to as Uzziah, because this all isn’t convoluted enough.
In Israel, in the north, Jeroboam II takes the throne, and his reign is characterized by great naughtiness. The same can be said for his son Zechariah, the next king, and for that matter, for the next five kings of Israel: Shallum, Menahem, Pekaniah, Pekah, and Hoshea. All naughty, all the time.
[Hang in there, we’re coming down to the home stretch]
Meanwhile, in Judah, a notoriously wicked king named Ahaz comes to power, and some cataclysmic changes are about to devastate the twin kingdoms of Israel.
Around this time, the nation of Assyria (to Israel’s North) became one of the ancient world’s first superpowers, an empire with a view to domination over the whole Near Eastern world. Israel and Judah, while often bullied by Assyria, don’t consider invasion a real possibility or concern. Judah’s King Ahaz is more worried about King Pekah of Israel and his allies, and so he makes a cowardly deal with Assyria’s king, bribing him with Jerusalem’s gold and converting the Temple to an Assyrian holy site. All of this incurs condemnation from a prophet named Isaiah, who will get his own episode some other day.
Not long after (around 740 BCE), Israel’s own tribute to Assyria is rejected, and the northern kingdom is utterly destroyed by the empire’s armies, and thousands of Israelites are killed or dragged off into exile. That’s it – no more kings in Israel. For all practical purposes, no more Israel.
Meanwhile, back in Judah, Hezekiah son of Ahaz is king. He is a good king by the standard of the prophets, and while fears the Assyrians, he listens to the prophet Isaiah. As a result, Assyria is unable to capture Jerusalem, and the empire begins to crumble from within.
The fall of Assyria is good news indeed, but the void left by one empire is quickly filled by another. Babylon rises to power, and within Hezekiah’s life they become a nuisance.
After Hezekiah Judah is ruled by the remarkably idolatrous Manasseh and his similar son Amon.
After Manasseh and Amon comes Josiah, a good king in the mold of David who enacts many reforms which prove to be too-little, too-late.
After Josiah’s death, Judah is briefly ruled by his son Jehoahaz, who is swiftly kidnapped by Egypt’s Pharaoh, who replaces him with another son of Josiah named Eliakim, who is Egypt’s stooge. Pharaoh changes his name to Jehoiakim.
Jehoiakim eventually becomes a stooge of Babylon’s King Nebuchadnezzar, as does his son Jehoiachin.
Now, we come to the end. The end of Judah, and the end of Kings. During the reign of Jehoiachin (around 597 BCE), the armies of Babylon march on Jerusalem and conquer it. Unlike Assyria, which doled out fire and destruction, Babylon has a smarter plan: they carry away Judah’s best and brightest to Babylon, leaving the general population in the homeland under the rule of a puppet king named Zedekiah.

That’s the data. Those are the kings of Israel and Judah, and those are the events which tragically and suddenly ended the national period and the monarchy. Nothing can be the same after this. Kings doesn’t end with a postgame analysis or some explicit commentary on what we’ve just read, but a few things are apparent from the presentation. For one thing, there really are no “good” kings, just kings who were more or less wicked than the others. After Solomon, God wouldn’t even speak directly to the monarchs. He spoke through the prophets, the only “good guys” in these accounts. And we can conclude with some certainty that the author (or editors) of Kings, most likely the prophets themselves, viewed the fall of Israel and the Babylonian exile as the DIRECT RESULTS of the sinful activity of the kings.

Kings is much more than a simple history book. It is a scathing expose of the culprits responsible for plunging Israel into apostasy and exile, namely the kings themselves, who – despite their anointing as representatives of the people, chose to ignore the prophets and seek their own agenda.

Next, and finally, we turn to Chronicles. Now, don’t fear – we don’t need to do a play by play rundown of the entire scroll of Chronicles, since it’s basically a truncated presentation of the same material we just saw in Kings. This has led many to disregard or dismiss Chronicles as a repetitive and unnecessary book. However, it’s what’s missing from Chronicles that gives it its unique value. Here is a brief comparison.

Chronicles is divided into two parts just like Kings, but the first part consists of genealogies, lists of officers, and a retelling of David’s reign. It is worth a read, particularly for the expanded view it provides of David, but for the sake of time and trajectory we’ll focus on the second part, which covers the same material as both halves of Kings: from Solomon to the exile.

The account of King Solomon in Chronicles gives us our first inkling of the book’s distinct point of view. All of the same elements are here: Solomon’s wisdom, his wealth, the building of the Temple… What’s missing is anything bad or unflattering. According to Chronicles, Solomon was a great and prosperous king, and then he died. Things like assassinations, the thousand foreign wives, and slave labor are omitted or glossed over. In this account, Solomon’s reign was an extension of the glorious reign of David, and God’s favor shone on both kings equally.

Then after Solomon’s death, the kingdom split during the reign of Rehoboam is described as Israel’s “rebellion,” and the northern kingdom is never recognized as a legitimate entity. In fact – and this is perhaps the major distinction of Chronicles versus Kings – the kings of Israel are not listed alongside the kings of Judah, and are only referenced as foils and nuisances to the true Judahite kings. That tells us one thing for certain: Chronicles is a product of Judah, of the house of David.

The rest of Chronicles is a list of the kings of Judah, the same southern rulers we met in Kings. But you’d hardly know it from the way they’re portrayed here. The apostasy of Judah’s kings is not whitewashed but is significantly played down, and more attention is given to how well these kings staved off the threat of the northern rebels. And conspicuously absent from all of the material is the steady stream of prophets who challenged and confronted these kings so boldly in the scroll of Kings. To the royally sympathetic authors of Chronicles, the prophets are barely on the radar. They just pop up here and there to deliver a message or oversee an event, they certainly don’t get their own biographies and adventure stories like Elijah and Elisha did in Kings. Also, while the stories of apostasy and failure are muted and truncated in Chronicles, the reforms of kings like Hezekiah and Josiah are expanded and celebrated.

The end of Chronicles is the Babylonian capture of Judah, the fall of Israel not warranting a full exposition. These verses from 2 Chronicles chapter 36 explore the reason for the defeat:

[14] All the officers of the priests and the people likewise were exceedingly unfaithful, following all the abominations of the nations. And they polluted the house of the LORD that he had made holy in Jerusalem.
[15] The LORD, the God of their fathers, sent persistently to them by his messengers, because he had compassion on his people and on his dwelling place. [16] But they kept mocking the messengers of God, despising his words and scoffing at his prophets, until the wrath of the LORD rose against his people, until there was no remedy.

The sense here is that all the people of Judah were equally guilty of the sin which led to the exile. The kings played their part, but it was ultimately “the people,” the citizens, officials and priests, who ignored God’s message and incurred his wrath. The blame is evenly spread around. You get the feeling reading Chronicles that you’re reading the official government version of what went down. It’s like reading a White House briefing on a presidential scandal. The central facts cannot be avoided, but the spin is heavy.

Here’s the bottom line of our analysis: Kings appears to have been written or compiled by Israel’s prophets, while Chronicles appears to have been put together by the kings themselves, or their descendants and sympathizers. In our last couple of podcasts, we examined the fascinating relationship between prophets and kings in the ancient biblical world. We observed that prophets existed primarily in this period to function as a foil for kings – challenging their power and keeping them in check. This dynamic is on full display in Kings, while it is suspiciously absent in Chronicles. Kings is a log of failures and punishments, wicked kings ignoring the warnings of prophets and plunging Israel into apostasy and an almost inevitable exile. Chronicles is about the great kings of Israel, who did their best to keep an unruly and ungrateful nation in order until things just got out of hand.

The Assyrian and Babylonian exiles represented a fatal disruption of Israel’s national life, and even worse: they shattered the covenant which had defined Israel’s very identity. Remember what we said about the covenant law: it is specifically designed for this people living in this land. When the people are scattered and the land is on fire, what hope is there for the covenant? What we have in these two books are two desperate attempts to deal with horrific new reality. The prophets are like young, idealistic hippies: if the old guys in charge of Israel had done what was right, this would never have happened. And you know what? The Torah scroll called Deuteronomy – a literary influence on the text of Kings – supports this view strongly. On the other hand we have the Chronicles, which are content to spread the blame around and protect the reputations of Judah’s kings.

Once again we discover that if we allow the bible to be a living human witness to history, rather than some relic or magic instruction book, we will encounter nothing less than a living and breathing testimony to the experience of ancient people who wanted nothing more than to tell their side of some pretty remarkable stories. And for Israel, this is just the beginning of a remarkable new story – the story of if and how they might survive violent deportation and captivity in foreign, pagan lands. From here on, the literature takes some outrageous turns. I hope you’ll join me.

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Tags: ahab, ahaz, bible, chronicles, elijah, elisha, jezebel, josiah, kings, prophets, solomon

Episode 23 – Jonah and the Fish and the Plant and the Worm

Episode 22 – Ezekiel’s Magical Mystery Tour

Episode 21 – Jeremiah: The Man Who Was Very Sad

Episode 20 – Isaiah

Supplement – Christmas Special!

Episode 19 – Song of Songs

Episode 18 – Wisdom Part 2: The Book of Job

Episode 17 – Wisdom Part 1: King Solomon’s Mind (Proverbs & Qoheleth)

Episode 16 – Psalms

Episode 15 – Kings & Chronicles

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